President Joe Biden took a pointed shot at Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
He noted no president had attended the event since Barack Obama did in 2016. The event was cancelled for two years because of COVID, and Trump boycotted throughout his presidency owing to his longstanding beef with the press.
“We had a horrible plague... followed by two years of COVID,” Biden cracked.
The joke was perhaps the most biting from Biden over the course of his speech, but far from the only one. He also took aim at Republicans, members of the press — and even himself.
He said he was excited to be at the dinner with the “only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have.”
Biden also referenced Fox News’ aggressive anti-vaccine posturing, noting that every one of the network’s journalists who attended the dinner were “vaccinated and boosted,” as required.
Later on, Biden insisted that he wasn’t there to attack the GOP.
“That’s not my style. There’s nothing I can say about the GOP that [House Minority leader] Kevin McCarthy hasn’t already put on tape,” he quipped — a reference to a series of damning recordings of McCarthy in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The president also got serious as he stressed the vital importance of the press at a time when the “truth is buried by lies, and the lies live on as truth.”
He urged journalists: “Seek the truth as best you can ... to illuminate and educate.”
