Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, April 29, 2024
When the primary flotation device for the Biden White House holds a dinner, you go.
So his handlers dutifully prepped the 81-year-old with whatever it takes to keep him awake for such extended events and hauled him to the Washington Hilton for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.
Back when conservative news organization attended the dinners, they were typically found in the back corners of the ballroom, but the jokes were on occasion brutally bipartisan . . . and funny.
That was then; This is now.
President Donald Trump blew off the dinner for four years, and who can blame him? Why party with the very “correspondents” who knowingly lied about you for four years, including some who gladly accepted bogus Pulitzer Prizes that they then refused to give back?
As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York put it, the April 27 dinner was a “lovefest”. Was it fun? Who knows? We weren’t there.
In his remarks to the mostly friendly media operatives on hand (independent media influencers such as Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson were not in attendance), Biden did what anyone “confident of his support in the press would do: He both insulted his audience and told them what to do — in this case, to go after Trump,” York noted.
“Some of you complain that I don’t take enough of your questions,” Biden said. “No comment.”
Then came the marching orders:
I’m sincerely not asking of you to take sides but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment, move past the horse-race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics, and focus on what’s actually at stake. I think, in your hearts, you know what’s at stake. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
In other words, “God love ya — go after him, not me.”
Whoever wrote this next joke for Biden would in the real world need to be fired. In Democrat bizzarro world, he/she/they will likely be promoted:
“I’ve had a great stretch since the State of the Union,” Biden mumbled, “but Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather.”
York also noted that “an appearance at the dinner is not normally thought of as a campaign speech, but Biden made it one.”
“The defeated former president has made no secret of his attack on our democracy,” Biden told the crowd. “He promised a ‘blood bath’ when he loses again. We have to take this seriously.” (The “blood bath” reference is a misleading characterization of Trump’s actual remark, which Biden’s handlers know, but they use it often anyway.)
One non-journalist who was fully on board the Biden train was the night’s “entertainment,” Colin Jost, who is a cast member of NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
“As befitted the evening, Jost took the gentlest of jabs at Biden and spent much more time on Trump,” York noted.
“Let me see if I can summarize where this race stands at this moment,” Jost said. “The Republican candidate for president owes half a billion in fines for bank fraud and is currently spending his days farting himself awake during a porn star hush money trial, and the race is tied?”
Actually, the race isn’t tied. A new CNN poll released on Sunday shows Trump leading Biden by 6 points, 49% to 43%, in a head-to-head national matchup, and by 9 points, 42% to 33%, in a race that includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some minor left-wing candidates.
Jost capped off the Biden lovefest by gushing about his grandfather: “He voted for you in the last election that he ever voted in. He voted for you, and the reason that he voted for you is because you’re a decent man. My grandpa voted for decency, and decency is why we’re all here tonight. Decency is how we’re able to be here tonight. Decency is how we’re able to make jokes about each other, and one of us doesn’t go to prison after.”
York injected some reality:
“It is remarkable when anti-Trump voices congratulate themselves for not imprisoning their opposition, even as Trump faces a maximum of 136 years in prison in a prosecution that even some critics have suggested is weak and politically motivated. But they do. In any event, the dinner seemed far away from the world in which Trump leads Biden by 6 points and majorities view Trump’s presidency as a success and Biden’s as a failure — in other words, the rest of America.”
Losers prom? Unlike Trump, Biden honors White House Correspondents Dinner with his presence added by Editor Two on
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