{"id":16790,"date":"2026-07-25T13:02:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16790"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:02:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:02:41","slug":"trump-roasts-media-at-white-house-correspondents-dinner-nicki-minaj-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16790","title":{"rendered":"Trump Roasts Media at White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner, Nicki Minaj Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tPresident Trump appeared at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/politics-news\/white-house-correspondents-dinner-redo-set-for-july-1236611698\/\">rescheduled White House Correspondents\u2019 Association Dinner,<\/a> which took place in Washington, D.C. on Friday with a new location and a drastically reduced list of attendees, following the cancellation of the event in April after a gunman fired shots as the event was underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMoved to the Waldorf\u00a0Astoria in the nation\u2019s capital instead of the Washington Hilton and reduced from 2,600 guests down to around 680, it was less a star-studded event that each year sees celebrity guests brush elbows with reporters and editors as they sit with the politicians they cover \u2014 the optics of which are criticized each year by journalists and critics alike.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFor the make-up dinner, the WHCA is also bringing back the Secret Service member who survived the April shooting, when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/general-news\/cole-tomas-allen-charged-attempted-trump-assassination-1236578238\/\">31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen<\/a>, who allegedly intended to target multiple Trump administration officials, was arrested near the screening area outside the banquet hall after running past the security checkpoint. Plus, the dinner honored the Washington Hilton staff who stayed on the scene and continued tending to rattled guests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tElements of the first dinner remained. The awards were handed out; mentalist Oz Pearlman, who got just one private trick for the White House press secretary at the first dinner before gunshots caused chaos, returned to deliver some levity; and ahead of the event, a group of hundreds of former journalists and press freedom groups sent a letter to the WHCA. Now, they were urging the association to capitalize on Trump\u2019s attendance by calling him out for his administration\u2019s attacks on First Amendment rights, which include recently subpoenaing <em>New York Times<\/em> reporters over their coverage and threatening to revoke licenses of broadcasters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe president took to the stage around 9:30 p.m. ET and brought up the attempted attack early in his much-anticipated speech, which has been speculated upon heavily in April and again ahead of the July event. Traditionally, the dinner\u2019s speeches are a roast of the attendees and the president himself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cThe attempted mass murder at the Washington Hilton-that\u2019s what it could have been-was an assault on our democracy itself,\u201d Trump said. \u201cA very serious situation. Many of you were there with me, and some showed extreme bravery, like Pete Hegseth, Steve Miller, Tom Holman. Really, they were standing on tables. And most of you were under the table,\u201d he said to Friday night\u2019s attendees, which got some laughs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFollowing some begrudging admiration of the press and the constitutional freedom of speech, the notion of a third Trump term, the White House ballroom project, and Robert Kennedy Jr. mowing down the cow served at dinner with his car were some of Trump\u2019s early jokes. They garnered a new laugh, but his first zinger to fall completely flat came soon and involved a rapper and MAGA convert whom he recently had at a White House event.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cAfter hearing the gunshots, many people yelled, \u2018Get down! Get down!\u2019 which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,\u201d he said, referring to the dance. \u201cDo you believe it? Get down. She\u2019s the only one that really understood what that meant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tTrump\u2019s speech began to meander as he at first reminisced about the Waldorf Astoria in the 1980s and moved to a number of topics and name-dropped celebrities not in the room and with whom he has personal gripes, some going back for decades. Rosie O\u2019Donnell, Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen all got a mention, with the latter\u2019s looks as he ages compared to the president\u2019s own. Trump joked that his live show, where he was railing about the administration\u2019s policies, was now called \u201cBored in the U.S.A.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAttendees were caught on camera in footage streamed live by the <em>Associated Press<\/em> looking bored and irritated as Trump\u2019s speech went past the 20-minute mark, and it was clear this was not going to be the biting speech some anticipated Trump\u2019s typical airing, but another airing of grievance from Trump peppered with a few jokes that landed with a thud.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tEven the president was critical of some of the jokes when they received no laughs. At one point, he referred to the \u201cgovernor of Chicago,\u201d presumably billionaire Gov. of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, while discussing a staged fight among politicians.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cI would say I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I\u2019m going to mention instead Jerry Nadler, and they\u2019re fighting for a big piece of cheesecake, big fat piece of cheesecake,\u201d he said to zero audible laughs. \u201cWho the hell wrote that line?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tDuring the airing of grievances portion of his speech on a night celebrating journalists, Trump, as expected, tore into reporters for perceived unfair treatment, and specifically mentioned CNN anchors Kaitlan Collins (an award recipient honored earlier in the night) and Jake Tapper (a multiple winner of the multiple recipient of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association Merriman Smith Award).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFollowing mentions of late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, whom he called talentless, Trump also admitted that he truly hates some people.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cThey thought about going with a professional clown for entertainment, but Adam \u2018Shifty\u2019 Schiff was not available,\u201d Trump joked. \u201cYou know he\u2019s known \u2014 I hate some people. You know, I shouldn\u2019t say the surprise. I\u2019m not supposed to hate him. I\u2019m supposed to love everybody, but he\u2019s a terrible person. He\u2019s a liar, and I called him watermelon head because he has the largest head I\u2019ve ever seen with the smallest neck, pencil neck. How does that big fat ugly head stand on a on a little pencil, pencil, pencil neck?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAfter about an hour of a speech that turned nasty fast and featured few funny lines, Trump ended the speech on an up note and even praised the journalists in the room and their profession.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cWe have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and we\u2019re going to keep it going,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I just want to say, this is a room I have tremendous respect for the people in this room. Sometimes I don\u2019t feel you treat me fair. Maybe you do. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t feel that. But sometimes you treat me very fairly, and I have a lot of respect for your profession. Your profession is amazing. And I just want to thank you for having me. And it\u2019s been fun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump appeared at the rescheduled White House Correspondents\u2019 Association Dinner, which took place in Washington, D.C. on Friday with a new location and a drastically reduced list of attendees, following the cancellation of the event in April after a gunman fired shots as the event was underway.\u00a0 Moved to the Waldorf\u00a0Astoria in the nation\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2286853806.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}