Jokes at the 2024 White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner

US Supreme Court kicks presidential immunity can of worms down the road

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), founded over a century ago, is an organization of accredited journalists who cover the activities of the President of the United States.

The WHCA Annual Dinner, traditionally held on the last Saturday in April celebrated its centenary on Saturday, April 27, 2024. A star-studded event, attended by President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, political and media luminaries of all stripes, and a host of celebrities from every field of public life in the USA.

Predictably, Donald Trump refused to “honor” the occasion with his presence, knowing he would have been ruthlessly mocked with jokes that write themselves. A moron with no sense of humor, Trump has proved over the years that while he can dish out lies and abuse, he is too small and petty a man to take any criticism, however justified and factual, against himself.

The Dinner is seen as a light-hearted celebration of the First Amendment and the freedom of the press, when the nation’s elite, including the president, journalists and comedians delight in roasting each other with sometimes outrageous insults, even inappropriate interpretations of current, sometimes tragic crises developing in the world. The epitome and essence of free speech guaranteed by a vibrant democracy – the naked truth embellished with fact, comedy and satire. An event originated, to quote Lincoln’s words spoken in a different, nevertheless eternally appropriate, context, “with malice to none; with charity for all…. let us strive to finish the work we are in….to bind up the nation’s wounds….to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace”.

At his final WHCA dinner in 2016, President Obama stressed the need for the media to band themselves to protect one of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the US Constitution – a free and unfettered press. He said that “a free press is needed more than ever in this age, when liberal democracies are under attack and when notions of objectivity, of free press, and of facts and evidence, were being undermined, and in some cases entirely ignored”.

Prophetic words when we recall Donald Trump’s frequent and infamous rants, calling the free press the “enemy of the people”, an opinion shared by one of his idols, Adolf Hitler, exhorting his supporters “not to believe their own eyes, but to believe only what he says”. Which many millions do, to this day.

The two main speeches of the Dinner are usually reserved for the incumbent president and one of the nation’s many renowned comedians or satirists. President Obama was famous for his wonderfully funny and self-deprecating speeches. President Biden’s speech did not reach those lofty standards, but his relatively short address was also self-deprecatory and funny, though perhaps more political than usual or appropriate.

After the initial pleasantries, President Biden had some fun with a few Trump jokes:

“Of course, the election is in full swing. I am a grown man running against a six-year-old!”

“Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather” (a snide reference to Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom he had a sexual encounter, the subject of the criminal trial against him currently in progress in the New York courts).

“Trump is so desperate (he is in debt for more than $500 million in court ordered damages for sexual harassment and financial fraud), he started reading those Bibles he’s selling. Then he got to the First Commandment, ‘You shall have no other Gods before me.’ That’s when he put it down and said, this book is not for me”.

Jokes aside, Biden emphasized that after the Trump-incited insurrection of January 6, 2021, “the most urgent question of our time is whether democracy is still the sacred cause of America. That is the question the American people must answer this year”.

Trump has “promised a bloodbath when he loses again. Eight years ago, we could have written it off as just Trump talk. But no longer. Not after January 6”.

He ended his speech with a toast to the free press:

“In the age of disinformation, credible information that people can trust is more important than ever. And that makes you – and I mean this from the bottom of my heart – it makes you more important than ever.

“So tonight, I would like to make a toast.

“To a free press, to an informed citizenry, to an America where freedom and democracy endure. God bless America”.

Colin Jost, the host of the Weekend Update section of Saturday Night Live, the most popular weekly TV show in the US which has topped national ratings for over four decades, had the singular honor of making the keynote speech at the Dinner. A privilege accorded in the past to such superstars of the entertainment community, as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jay Leno.

Jost started off with a few mild cracks about Biden’s age and their common Irish heritage, but soon voiced one of the greatest mysteries of our time:

“There’s an election six extremely long months from now. So let me see if I can summarize where this race stands at the moment: The Republican candidate for president owes half a billion dollars in fines for bank fraud and damages for sexual harassment, and is currently spending his days in a New York court, farting himself awake during a porn star hush money trial, and the race is tied? THE RACE IS TIED! Nothing makes sense anymore.

“The candidate who was a famous New York City playboy took your abortion rights away, and the guy who’s trying to give you your abortion rights back is an 80-year-old Irish Catholic. And the race is tied?

“NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANYMORE!”

The Dinner took place while two of the most important cases in the nation’s history were in progress in New York and Washington D.C.

The New York trial featured the first time in history that a US president faced criminal charges, the aforementioned hush money trial. Trump faces 34 felony counts for election campaign fraud. Jury selection has been completed, and several prosecution witnesses have already testified, providing ample evidence of Trump’s complicity in the alleged crimes. Trump is required by law to be present at court, and made good use of his entrances and exits from the courthouse to give press conferences on the injustices Crooked Joe has brought upon him, to interfere with his election campaign.

In fact, on April 26, he took advantage of one of these press conferences to wish his wife, Melania a Happy Birthday. Trump sent his loving wishes (Happy Birthday, honey, I love you!) on national TV, in a most romantic setting: the lobby of a New York courthouse, where he is the defendant in a trial he has been accused of banging a porn star and a Playboy model, while his loving wife was pregnant with his son. I guess Melania was too busy looking for any loopholes in her prenup to take her husband’s birthday wishes seriously.

Strangely, though, Trump’s defense is that he has never had sexual relations with either of these ladies, although there is irrefutable evidence that he has made payments of $130,000 and $150,000, respectively, to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Perhaps Trump’s amended explanation to his wife should be, “I am sorry, darling, I did pay those women, but I swear I never had sex with them. I promise you I won’t make that mistake again!”

The trial has now completed its third week, and Trump, apart from providing entertainment for the accredited press and spectators by farting himself to sleep, has been fined $9,000 for nine counts of violating his gag order, the maximum permitted by law. Judge Merchan has threatened him with incarceration if he persists with such violations.

Sadly, I personally feel that this is a weak case which will end up either as a mistrial with a hung jury, or a settlement not amounting to a felony and jail time. I hope I am wrong. Trump, who is facing far more serious crimes, like sedition, obstruction of justice and espionage, will once again announce such a result as a “victory”, further evidence of being the eternal victim of a witch hunt, persecuted by a crooked Biden government.

The Supreme Court is also currently hearing oral arguments on the Presidential Immunity case. Trump’s counsel argues that an incumbent president enjoys complete immunity for any crime he may commit, personal or official, as long as, in his sole opinion, such an act is deemed to be necessary in the national interest.

Justice Sotomayor asked Trump counsel, John Sauer, if the president, deciding “that his (political) rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, would that constitute an official act subject to immunity?”. Incredibly, Sauer said that it could well be an official act, depending on the context, and therefore the president would not be subject to prosecution.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during the hearings, “I am deeply concerned that granting immunity would embolden future presidents to commit crimes and use their office as a shield. I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is of turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminality”. Which Trump has publicly stated he would do if he is re-elected.

The 6/3 Republican dominated US Supreme Court, including three Trump appointed Justices, and two, Justices Thomas and Alito, proven of prejudice and corruption, has decided that this appeal, which is devoid of any constitutional merit whatsoever, is worthy of further consideration.

Specifically, the Court is unable to decide if former president Donald J. Trump would be immune from prosecution for the 91 felonies, including rape, fraud, sedition, obstruction of justice and espionage, with which he has been charged of committing during his first term of presidency.

The Court will make its ruling by the end of June, a delay which would render the trials against Trump impossible to be concluded before the November election. Another win for Trump.

The US Supreme Court is vacillating on a principle held inviolate by the vast majority of the global legal community, and the cornerstone of democracy, purely with the corrupt motive of delaying and denying Donald Trump justice and accountability for the crimes he has committed.

In other words, Donald Trump, and any future president of the United States is above the law.

Trump has already laid down the groundwork for violence if he loses the November election. At a recent interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Trump said, “if everything is honest, I’d gladly accept the results. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country”. And who will be the judge of the integrity of the election? Trump himself, of course.

Trump is echoing the words he used to incite his cult before the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when he had lied that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, against all evidence:

“The election was stolen by the radical left and the fake news media…. We will never give up, we will never concede. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country”.

It is therefore obvious that Trump will not “go gentle into that good night”, when he loses in November, as he already knows he will, in spite of his bravado about the polls. Terrified about his impending imprisonment, he will “burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light”. He will, once again, refuse to concede defeat and unleash his white supremacist, Nazi cult to violence, in his words, incite a “bloodbath”. And he will fail, again.