President Donald Trump’s rambling Friday night speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was riddled with pointless mockery, “missed opportunities” and feeble attempts at humor that fell flat, according to analysis from a panel of CNN hosts and commentators.
“Just from a performance standpoint and comparing it to previous presidents at these events, he bombed,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as a Trump aide during his first term, said Friday. “He objectively bombed. There were missed opportunities.”
“The View” co-host continued, “Listen, I didn’t think he was going to work a lot of substance into it. But as I said, he’s someone who’s actually very capable of humor. And instead, he went for really lowball, unfunny jokes. Like, at least make the punchline land.”
Trump spoke at the rescheduled event after a gunman interfered during the original dinner in April. His speech included strange attacks on journalists, including CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. He also ripped into Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — telling her to “get the hell out of our country.”
Among Trump’s failed joke attempts included one about a senator being asked by his wife to “immediately come up the stairs and make love to me” — with the punchline being, “I can’t do both [immediately].” Trump also acknowledged the silence in the room, then slammed his own speechwriters. He also once again floated running for a third and unconstitutional term.
CNN’s Van Jones, who credited Trump earlier in the evening for attending, was disappointed.
“The worst thing you can say is that it just wasn’t funny at all. It just wasn’t funny. It was mean and small,” he said. “But you can be mean and small and funny. This was mean and small and not funny, and he didn’t talk about any Americans besides himself and his enemies.”
Collins in particular drew more odd commentary from Trump, who clumsily compared the award-winning journalist to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. He also congratulated Collins on her “nice position” at “CNN Fake News” — and once again urged her to “smile.”
“There are people at home who can’t figure out how to pay for gas,” Jones said Friday in his continued analysis of the speech. “There are people at home who worry about their nephew who’s serving overseas. There’s people at home who have real problems, who would love to see somebody reflect their reality and maybe make fun of some of their enemies, some of their problems.”
CNN host Laura Coates on Friday read a statement on the air after the speech concluded from network president Mark Thompson, which read, “We stand by our journalists and the integrity and fair-mindedness with which the CNN team reports the news.”
It concluded, “Honest, accurate journalism sometimes irritates politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the US Constitution. CNN will continue to exercise this right.”