All posts tagged "white house correspondents dinner"

Trump's 'cognitive decline' already cost him a key talent: family member

President Donald Trump has lost a long-time talent because of his "cognitive decline," one of his family members said.

During an episode of Fast Politics, host Molly Jong-Fast spoke with Mary Trump, who is the president's niece, a psychologist, and a frequent critic. The two were talking about Trump's speech at Lindsey Graham's funeral and the White House Correspondents' Dinner when Jong-Fast asked if Trump had lost the ability to read the room.

"Did he used to be able to not say the quiet part out loud?" Jong-Fast asked.

"Donald did have the ability to read the room better," Mary Trump said. "He was good at pushing the envelope in ways and then recalibrate in real time."

As an example, Mary Trump pointed to a time when Trump was speaking at one of his MAGA rallies shortly after the COVID vaccine came out. "He was speaking positively about the vaccine, and he got booed," Mary Trump recalled. "And we never heard him say that again."

However, she sees that her uncle has lost the ability to change what he's saying to appease an audience, and she blamed it on his declining cognitive health.

"Now we're seeing that he does not have the ability to do that. What that means is he's losing impulse control," Mary Trump said. "And that's a part of his overall cognitive decline."

Jong-Fast said Trump also "really bombed" at his White House Correspondents' Dinner speech and "didn't recalibrate. He just criticized the speech and kept going."

"You've got this very old man who's clearly not doing well in every category of being human, psychologically, emotionally, cognitively, physically," Mary Trump said.

Trump's attack may backfire as Jon Stewart hands Kaitlan Collins a chance to fire back

CNN's Kaitlan Collins could get the last word against President Donald Trump on Monday night.

Collins will be the guest on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" after Trump's bizarre attack on the correspondent during the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Friday, The Daily Beast reported.

The reporter has been a long target of criticism by the president and was expected to respond to the president's obsession with her during her appearance on Stewart's show. Stewart has been a vocal opponent of Trump and has often spoken out about him.

Collins received an award at the WHCD for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the Oval Office in 2025.

In his speech at the event, Trump mocked Collins' looks and demeanor.

"I wanna personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award; was all about me, it's a fake, she shouldn't get the award." He then added that Collins is "a young, attractive woman" who "never smiles," telling the audience, "I said, 'Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile. You have a nice position. You're at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. Just smile, Kaitlan.'"

Trump then compared Collins to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, joking that he'd mistakenly thought she'd landed "a major new sponsorship" before realizing "it wasn't her on the Bud Light can."

She later posted a pointed message paired with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote on social media.

Trump on Sunday escalated his multi-day spat with Collins when he shared an AI image of her as Mulvaney.

'Bomb after bomb': CNN pundits rip into Trump's 'mean and small' WHCD speech

President Donald Trump's White House Correspondents' Dinner speech drew sharp criticism from CNN pundits immediately after it finished.

On Friday night, Trump delivered his first speech as president at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and it took just over an hour. Shortly after it wrapped, CNN pundits tore into it, with conservatives even having trouble defending it.

"It just wasn't funny at all," political commentator Van Jones said. "It just wasn't funny. It was mean and small, but you could be mean and small and funny. This was mean and small and not funny."

CNN anchor Laura Coates said that Trump "shot himself in the foot" by missing an opportunity to speak to people. Jones agreed, saying, "He didn't talk about any American besides himself and his enemies" when he could have talked about people at home "and maybe make fun of their enemies."

Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin said that "even from a performance standpoint" and compared to previous presidents, "he bombed. He objectively bombed." She also pointed out "missed opportunities."

Conservative CNN pundit Scott Jennings noted that Trump started the speech by denouncing political violence and ended it by saying he respected journalists and people in their profession.

"Now the middle of it is going to be controversial because some of the jokes landed and some of the jokes didn't," Jennings said, noting he liked Trump's jab at RFK Jr. during the speech. "Some of the jokes veered off into very, sort of, ornery insults, and that's not going to land for many audiences."

Jones made a joke of his own about Trump's speech, saying, "It was just bomb after bomb after bomb. It's like, we're not Iran. We're the American people. Quit bombing."

Trump trashes his own 'freaking stupid speech' at White House Correspondents' Dinner

President Donald Trump slammed the writing and jokes in his own speech for the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

On Friday night, Trump delivered an hour-long speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but he wasn't happy with the jokes laced throughout it.

Several times during the speech, Trump asked, "Who the h— wrote this?" One of Trump's jokes used a point about congressional term limits as a setup.

"All joking aside, I do think we need term limits in Congress," Trump said. "I think term limits are very important because I see what's happening."

However, Trump had trouble making it clear what was going on in his joke. The point about term limits drifted into a joke about "a senator I knew...a great guy" getting a text from his wife.

"She said, 'When you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me,'" Trump said. "And he said, 'I can't do both.'"

The "can't do both" line seemed to be the punchline, but it was met with silence. Trump immediately caught the silence and tried to signal that it was a joke. "Haha," he said, smiling at the crowd. "You know? You know?"

Trump repeated the punchline and kept trying to explain it. The audience stayed silent, however, as Trump flashed a mocking grin to tell people it was supposed to be funny.

"In other words, you can't go up the stairs and make love," Trump said. "Does anybody get that one? I thought that was actually pretty good. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole freaking stupid speech."

Trump roasts his own Cabinet member during WHCD speech: 'He's a piece of work'

President Donald Trump roasted one of his own Cabinet members with bizarre habits in a moment that drew laughs.

During his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Trump made fun of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his odd treatment of animals.

"I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire very delicious beef tenderloin, very special beef," Trump said, before pointing to Kennedy and saying he "personally ran over the cow in his car."

Earlier this year, Kennedy was shown in a video grabbing and being bitten by snakes and responded to the viral moment by posting another video of him handling a snake. The moment prompted ridicule over how Kennedy has handled animals in the past, like picking up a dead bear cub on the side of the road, chainsawing the head off a dead whale and traveling with a falcon on a plane.

Trump continued his joke about the tenderloin by saying that Kennedy "cut it up, and he brought it here for you to eat tonight, so it's very fresh."

Kennedy was shown laughing along with the joke alongside his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, while others around him laughed.

"And Bobby also suggested an appetizer featuring his favorite cut of male raccoon roadkill," Trump said. "But we drew the line at that, Cheryl. We said, no, 'We're not going to do that. We're not doing that.'"

Trump wrapped up his joke about Kennedy by adding "he's a piece of work," and "it is fun, but he is a very different kind of a person."

Trump makes bizarre twerking joke about shooting that threatened journalists' lives

President Donald Trump tried to ease some of the awkward tension at the White House Correspondents' Dinner with a joke about the shooting that disrupted the previous one in April.

Specifically, he made a joke about twerking, and Trinidadian rap star Nicky Minaj, who has emerged as one of Trump's more prominent celebrity supporters.

"After hearing the gunshots, many people yelled, 'get down, get down' which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking," said the president.

The joke was met with a smattering of laughter from the crowd, many of whom were at the previous event and found their lives in danger from the shooting.

The dinner featured a prior awkward moment when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer gave an award to The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on Trump's ties to deceased child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump sued the paper over. As he listened to all this, Trump put on a show of good sport, shrugging for the crowd.

Trump shrugs as Wolf Blitzer details his assault on the press in WSJ award speech

The White House Correspondents' Dinner faced an awkward moment on Friday when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer confronted President Donald Trump with his attack on journalism.

Blitzer was onstage to present reporters from The Wall Street Journal for bombshell reporting last year, exposing Trump's lewd birthday poem from decades ago to late billionaire financier and child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, in which he sketched an image of a naked woman and wrote, "may every day be another wonderful secret."

As Trump sat there, listening to all of this, Blitzer added, “Trump filed a lawsuit against The Journal, revealing a reporter's home address.”

At this, Trump's only reaction a shrug.

The president has continued to deny The Journal's reporting, insisting that he doesn't make doodles like those reported in the article — even though a number of other such doodles from Trump exist and are in the public record.

Journalist dismantles Trump admin’s narrative on WHCD shooting: ‘Don’t see a muzzle flash’

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., released video Thursday of the suspected White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman rushing a security checkpoint and insisted it showed him “shoot a U.S. Secret Service officer,” but on Friday, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian raised serious questions about that claim.

“This suspect is in a room, and there's an officer with a canine that appears to be interested in following him, but the officer pulls the canine back,” Dilanian said, reviewing the video captured at the Washington Hilton on April 25.

“A second later, the suspect rushes out of the room, sprints through the metal detector past the first tranche of officers, and the question is whether he fired his shotgun on that video," Dilanian explained.

The suspected gunman, who has since been identified as Cole Tomas Allen and was charged with the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, was seen in the aforementioned video rushing through a security checkpoint past several law enforcement officials. One officer in the video can clearly be seen discharging their firearm several times in the direction of Allen.

And, while Pirro insisted that the video showed Allen shooting a Secret Service officer – with one Secret Service officer hospitalized for being shot – Dilanian pointed to several inconsistencies that were visible in the video that suggested Allen may have not discharged his weapon at all.

“Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., asserts that this video shows him firing a shotgun, but you don't see a muzzle flash,” Dilanian said.

“There is some evidence of a disturbance in the ceiling that some people have interpreted as potentially the firing of a shot, but this is a big deal because it's a question of whether he shot – he hasn't been charged with actually shooting an officer. And then the question about whether the Secret Service agent who was hit in the vest was actually hit with a part of a buckshot from this man's shotgun," he added.

Questions have swirled surrounding the security lapses at the event. Remarks made moments before the incident sparked an online frenzy, while additional scrutiny followed reports that journalists were permitted to move freely through the scene within hours.

“This video is really not definitive,” Dilanian continued. “Still up in the air – we haven't seen conclusive ballistics that shows that he actually fired a shot. And the second question, whether, if he did, if any of the fragments of that buckshot struck that agent who was hit in the vest.”

"You don't see a muzzle flash"

Trump-appointed @USAttyPirro insists that Cole Tomas Allen shot a Secret Service officer, but @KDilanianMSNOW raises serious doubts as to the Trump admin's narrative around the WHCD shooting. pic.twitter.com/ECHNpCntPT
— Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) May 1, 2026

Pirro won't say if gunman hit Secret Service: 'The agent did not shoot himself'

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, declined to definitively say that a gunman at the White House Correspondents' Dinner shot a Secret Service agent.

During a Thursday interview on Fox News, anchor Dana Perino revealed that the network's sources were told that the gunman, Cole Allen, shot an agent when he discharged his shotgun at the Washington D.C. Hilton on Saturday.

"Do you know if Cole Allen fired it or if it discharged accidentally?" Pirro asked.

"I don't think there's any question but that Cole Allen was intending to fire that Mossberg," Pirro replied. "And what we do know is that he fired off that 12-gauge shotgun one time. The cartridge was still in the weapon. He fired that gun in the direction of the Secret Service officer."

The U.S. attorney noted that one of the Secret Service officers fired his weapon five times.

"We know it based on the fact that we found five areas consistent with being hit by a 9mm," she said. "So the Secret Service agent did not shoot himself. And you've got Cole Allen going there, shooting off one round. And I don't think there's any question of what happened here."

"We're waiting for the official ballistics test, but at the same time, we filed papers in court this morning for the detention hearing today, indicating that this defendant was calculated, he was premeditated, he had every intention of killing the president and anyone who got in his way."

MAGA loyalists tear into 'loser' GOP Sen. for press gala shooting remarks: 'A disgrace'

MAGA slammed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Monday over his remarks after the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner amid the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding standoff in Congress.

GOP leaders were under pressure to end the ongoing stalemate as DHS employees, including Secret Service members who protected Trump, his cabinet, and the hundreds of politicians, diplomats, and journalists, on Saturday night, prepared to go without a paycheck, CNN reported.

"It is difficult to believe that this is the third time, the third time, President Trump has faced an assassination attempt... I am thankful for the many law enforcement officers who responded, in particular those who secured the shooter before he could harm the president or anyone else at the event," Thune said. "Incredibly, some of the law enforcement officers who responded are working for a department that is currently completely unfunded thanks to Democrats' refusal to negotiate on an Appropriations Bill."

MAGA loyalists started to turn on Thune via social media:

"Why have you allowed the good men and women of the Secret Service—who put their lives on the line for the President, his family, and his staff—to go without a paycheck for more than 70 days? This is inexcusable," attorney and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Mike Davis, wrote on X.

"Someone came out of his coma," wrote user TamAZ, who self-describes as "America First," wrote on X.

"It is past time for you to be removed as leader. You are part of the resistance, working against the American people. What a disgrace," user Richard Turner, who shares MAGA and right-wing content, wrote on X.

"Thune was too busy sabotaging President Trump and the American people to address another assassination attempt? Thune is not a 'leader' he is a loser. Thune can f--- all the way off," user CC, who self-describes as "original MAGA," wrote on X.

"You did this!" Dr. J Brown, who self-describes as an farmer "behind the blue curtain" and "ultra MAGA," wrote on X.

Why have you allowed the good men and women of the Secret Service—who put their lives on the line for the President, his family, and his staff—to go without a paycheck for more than 70 days?

This is inexcusable. https://t.co/g7Mitqym8E
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 27, 2026