President Donald Trump is used to speaking before supportive crowds that cheer nearly every line.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner offered a much tougher audience.
When one of his jokes fell flat, the president refused to let it go, turning an awkward moment into an even bigger spectacle.
The president tried to land a bit about congressional term limits by way of a senator with a text-happy wife. It bombed. Hard.
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“That the other day, a senator I knew got a text from his wife. Great guy,” Trump said. “She said, ‘When you get home, I want you to immediately come up the stairs and make love to me.’ And he said, ‘I can’t do both.’ You know what? You know, in other words, can’t go up the stairs and make love. Does anybody get that?”
Silence. So Trump doubled down, insisting it was actually the strongest material of the night.
“Well, I thought that was actually pretty good. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole freaking stupid speech that they wrote,” he said, before trying to explain the punchline a third time. “You know, in other words, you can’t go up the stairs and make love to work. You know? So, we’re looking for term limits. Does anybody understand?”
Threads users had thoughts, and they weren’t kind.
“Ah yes, explaining a totally unfunny joke for the THIRD time ALWAYS makes people laugh! They just didn’t get the brilliance the first two times,” one person wrote. Another quipped, “Multiple bombs were dropped, but the terrorist was the host,” while someone else added, “If it wasn’t for his staff we would hear crickets.”
Others turned their attention to the room itself, with one writing about White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “Karoline is just sitting there trying to think about how she is going to answer questions about Trump’s behavior,” and another noting, “They understood it they just didn’t find it at all humorous.”
The dinner itself looked nothing like the original.
According to NPR, this was WHCA 2.0, rescheduled from April after a gunman, identified as Cole Allen, stormed the Washington Hilton in what authorities called an assassination attempt, forcing evacuations and scrapping the event entirely.
Friday’s redo, held at the Waldorf Astoria, capped attendance around 700, tightened security with ID checks and detection dogs, and ditched the red carpet altogether. Trump admitted he’d scrapped his original, more combative remarks.
“That was going to be a doozy,” he said, but decided “the show must go on” with a softer touch instead.
That didn’t stop him from swinging anyway — at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (“don’t call him a fat pig, OK?”), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and members of his own Cabinet, including a jab that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. personally ran over the beef tenderloin’s cow.
The jabs at his own team came days after the seating complaint.
Trump, popped in on a “Ratepayers Pledge” event at Environmental Protection Agency headquarters on July 23 and groused about being handed what he called “the lowest seat I’ve ever seen,” pointing a finger at Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s team for the placement. “I don’t think it was Chris that did it,” he added, not entirely convincingly.
Many thought that the commander in chief should stick to golf and rallies, as this was not his forte.
Unlike his predecessor President Barack Obama, who roasted him in 2011, mercilessly at that year’s dinner — a night many believe still lives rent-free in Trump’s head.
The night wrapped with the president donning a red “Trump 2028” hat and promising, joke or not, that he’ll be back next year.
