The 2024 White House correspondents’ dinner is Saturday night, with "Saturday Night Live" cast member Colin Jost at the helm of the star-studded D.C. event. The annual dinner, which celebrates the journalists who cover the presidential administration, has featured speeches from every president for the past hundred years, with the exception of Donald Trump.
President Biden is set to speak in front of a roster of guests including Oscar winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, Caitlyn Jenner, along with many more.
Biden’s sense of humor has taken a leading role in the campaign in recent weeks, with viral quips on Truth Social’s financial woes and his predecessor’s infamous “inject bleach” gaffe. On his opponent’s criminal fraud trial, Biden was in good spirits.
“I haven’t had a chance to watch the court proceedings because I’ve been campaigning,” Biden said at a New York campaign event, per pool reports.
Jost is expected to deliver a comedic lashing of figures on both sides of the aisle, something he is used to given his decade of experience doing "Weekend Update."
“Colin Jost knows how to make Saturday nights funny,” Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said of the headliner in a statement. “His smart brand of comedy and keen observation will turn up the heat on the national news media and across the political spectrum," O'Donnell said.
The "SNL" writer and anchor was celebrated at a kick-off “Toast to Colin Jost” event on Friday night, where he brushed arms with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and a host of national media figures.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators reportedly plan to stage a “shut down” of the event, per NBC News, while a coalition of Palestinian journalists have urged for a boycott of the dinner due to what they call “the Biden administration’s ongoing complicity” in Israeli attacks on Gaza. Medhi Hasan, whose show on MSNBC ended last year, tweeted in support of the boycott.
You can tune in to the Correspondents’ dinner at 8 p.m. EST on C-SPAN or their YouTube channel.
