Trevor Noah.Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Daily ShowhostTrevor Noahwill headline the first White House Correspondents' Dinner since theCOVID-19 pandemicupended the annual event in 2020.
The White House Correspondents' Association, which organizes the April 30 dinner at the Washington Hilton,announced the news on Monday.
“The White House Correspondents' Dinner celebrates Americans' freedoms and the working people who bring the news to the world,” CBS News Radio’s Steven Portnoy, president of the WHCA, said in a release. “Trevor is an incredible talent who keeps us laughing — and thinking — four nights a week.”
The 37-year-old performer will alsohost the 64th Annual Grammy Awardsin April.
Under former PresidentDonald Trump, however, that tradition changed.
During the first three years of his term, Trump snubbed the gathering, telling reporters in 2019 that it was “too negative.”
“The dinner is so boring and so negative, that we’re going to hold a very positive rally … everybody wants it,” Trumpsaid at the time. “The Correspondents' Dinner is too negative, I like positive things.”
His White House also began avoiding the event after Wolf’s turn as emcee in 2018. Like comedians before her, she bluntly mocked several D.C. players including Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, though critics said she went too far.
In his bookRepublican Rescue, former New Jersey GovernorChris Christiewrote that Trump “was staring straight ahead” as Obama teased him about his role in the racist “birther” conspiracy about Obama.
“Donald Trump is here tonight,” Obama said in hisfive-minute routine. “And I know he has taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one prouder, to put this birth certificate to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter like, Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
“He was rocking back and forth in his chair. He still didn’t break a smile,” Christie wrote of Trump at the dinner, which was held just three days after Obama released his long-form birth certificate, a document Trump had repeatedly insisted didn’t exist.
Christie continued: “I can say this much: I spoke to Donald after the dinner. He was pissed off like I’d never seen him before. Just beside himself with fury.”
The 2020 and 2021 WHCA events were canceled, meanwhile, due to the pandemic.
source: people.com
