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Trump cracks jokes at White House Correspondents’ Dinner redo

▶ Watch Video: Trump swipes at journalists at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Washington — President Trump cracked jokes at reporters and politicians during take two of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday night, after April’s event was upended when an armed assailant rushed through a security checkpoint and the U.S. Secret Service opened fire on the gunman. 

Three months after the suspect was stopped outside the Washington Hilton’s ballroom, Mr. Trump attended the White House Correspondents’ Association’s do-over of the dinner at a different Washington hotel — the Waldorf Astoria, which was once a Trump Organization hotel. 

The event highlighted the president’s sometimes-tense relationship with the press. Mr. Trump has sparred with many of the journalists who spoke or accepted awards during the dinner — though he didn’t visibly express frustration while seated on stage, and he shook the award-winners’ hands. The president smiled as CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer described the fallout from The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Mr. Trump’s past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

“This has not been an easy evening,” Mr. Trump later joked during his speech, referring to the award-winners.

Mr. Trump said the assembled journalists included “a lot of people that I like, some I don’t like at all, but I respect most of them.” He needled and joked about the press, though he told the audience he scrapped some sharp-tongued material that he was planning to deliver in April: “I was going to rip people,” he said, calling it “such a letdown.” At times, the president got few reactions from the crowd when jabbing his political opponents or delivering rally-style material.  

At other points, the president joked about his penchant for drawing press attention. “You people have no idea how lucky you are. When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished,” Mr. Trump said, later donning a “Trump 2028” hat in what he cast as a bid to help out the news business.

Weijia Jiang, the correspondents’ association’s most recent past president and CBS News’ senior White House correspondent, said at one point during the event: “There is … an existential difference between criticizing the press and trying to undermine it. One is healthy and it makes all of us better. The other is exactly what the founders hoped to prevent.” 

Later in the event, mentalist Oz Pearlman performed a set in which he appeared to correctly guess the amount of money in Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s wallet (it was $85).

Jiang told Pearlman earlier in the evening: “We can’t wait to see what you reveal, but you can skip the part where you guess the president’s phone number because half the reporters in this room already have it.”

Secret Service officials have warned that nationwide threats have reached an unprecedented level, with agents opening roughly 10,000 protective intelligence cases since January — a nearly 40% increase from the same period last year. The Secret Service had prepared for the makeup dinner, and Secret Service Director Sean Curran told reporters in a briefing Wednesday that every venue is reevaluated before every presidential visit.

“We will always evaluate every site, and right now we have an advance team there, and they will take back, and they will set up a plan to set that site up for success, just like we did at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Hilton,” Curran said. “That is a success.”

On Friday night, the White House Correspondents’ Association presented an award for exceptional service to the Secret Service officer who was struck in his protective vest at the April dinner, along with the entire Washington Hilton staff. 

“I do think their bravery should be recognized, and I’m really looking forward to giving out those two awards,” Jiang said. 

Jiang said Friday night’s program was “very much the same” as April’s, although the size was smaller.

“There are enhanced security measures,” Jiang told C-SPAN. “We have a private security firm that has worked closely with Secret Service. There are new measures that every single dinner guest has to take.”

Attendees had to present a unique QR code with a government-issued photo ID to get through ticketing, and go through layers of security to enter the ballroom. The association worked extensively with the Secret Service.

“It was incredibly important to have the safety of our guests to be the top priority,” she said.

The world’s oldest president left for a ‘brief stay’ in Europe. He hasn’t returned in two months

By CNN
(CNN) — When Paul Biya won his first presidential election in Cameroon in 1984, Nformi Bime was 23 and still a student.Bime is now 65 and retired from teaching. Biya is 93 – and still president. Last year, he won a disputed eighth term that could keep him in office until he is nearly 100.“The best is yet to come,” Biya said before the election, which his opponents called fraudulent and was marred by deadly clashes between protesters and police.For the past two months, however, the man who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, when as prime minister he assumed power following the resignation of the sitting president, has been thousands of miles away. He left on June 7 for what his office called a “brief private stay in Europe” — now his longest uninterrupted absence from the Central African nation in years.Last week, government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi told French radio RFI that Biya was in Geneva, Switzerland and was not hospitalized, but did not give more detail on his whereabouts.A president who is rarely seenBiya is Cameroon’s second president since independence in 1960 and one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. He first won office in 1984 under a one-party system, then won six more elections after multiparty politics was introduced.He has spent extended periods abroad during his presidency. But his latest absence has revived questions about his health and who is running the country while he is away.Rumors about Biya’s health and whereabouts have long been part of public life in Cameroon, where he is rarely seen in public. His office has repeatedly had to push back against speculation that he was seriously ill or had died. In 2024, the government banned media discussions about his health, calling them a national security matter.Biya’s long rule also reflects a wider contrast across Africa. The continent has the world’s youngest population, but several countries are still led by aging leaders whose political careers began decades ago, including former liberation figures now governing in a different era.For millions of Cameroonians, Biya is the only president they have ever known.Bime’s children are among them. His oldest is 32, and his youngest is 18.Abit Riassai Acha, a 26-year-old doctoral student and community youth leader at the University of Yaoundé II, belongs to the same generation.“Growing up, President Biya was the only president I knew, so his presidency has been part of my entire experience of Cameroon,” said Acha, who voted for the first time in last year’s presidential election, backing the youthful opposition candidate Samuel Hiram Iyodi, 38.After more than four decades under the same president, questions about his leadership have only grown.“Because this has happened repeatedly over the years, many Cameroonians have become used to it,” Acha said of Biya’s long absences. “But becoming accustomed to something does not necessarily mean that people should stop asking questions about how the country is being governed.”Iyodi, who finished eighth in last year’s presidential election, which several candidates, including one of Biya’s main challengers, were barred from contesting, has called on parliament to ask Cameroon’s Constitutional Council to consider whether Biya’s absence amounts to a vacancy in the presidency. But such a move is unlikely to succeed, given the dominance of Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.Despite being away, Biya has continued to make key decisions from abroad, including a major military reshuffle announced earlier this month. Yet questions about his prolonged stay overseas have left officials publicly assuring Cameroonians that their president is still alive.Government spokesman Sadi dismissed concerns about a power vacuum, telling RFI that “President Paul Biya is alive” and “will soon return.”From hope to frustrationBime is old enough to remember when Biya was the change. He first heard Biya’s name in the 1970s, when he served as secretary-general of the presidency under Cameroon’s first president after independence, Ahmadou Ahidjo. After Ahidjo resigned in 1982, Biya took over.When Biya first appeared on the ballot two years later, Bime saw him as a “representation of hope,” he said. “We believed he was young and dynamic – handsome too. He meant so much to Cameroonians.”Few imagined that the man they saw as a new beginning would remain in power for decades. For his critics, the disappointment is not just about how long Biya has stayed in office, but what they see as his failure to improve the lives of ordinary Cameroonians.Political analyst Collins Molua Ikome, a Cameroonian based in Germany, said he saw some of the country’s problems firsthand when he visited Cameroon in April.“Roads in Cameroon are extremely bad. I even witnessed a fatal accident,” he told CNN.Ikome also pointed to frequent power cuts, corruption and a lack of jobs for young people.Wilson Tamfuh, a public and international law professor at the University of Dschang in West Cameroon, said the country has institutions that can keep the government running when the president delegates responsibilities. Key duties, he said, can be handled by the prime minister, the secretary-general at the presidency and ministers.But the bigger question, Tamfuh said, is whether the government is solving the country’s longstanding problems.“People want the Anglophone crisis resolved, standards of living ameliorated, more good roads, fewer people on the streets with degrees, and more,” he told CNN, referring to the years-long separatist conflict in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.Whenever Biya eventually leaves office, his successor will inherit a country also facing attacks by Boko Haram militants in the north and deep economic frustration among young people.Healthcare is another concern. Ikome said access to quality healthcare remains out of reach for many Cameroonians.“Life expectancy in the country is below 70 years. However, Biya has far outlived that due to access to medical healthcare abroad, which the ordinary Cameroonian cannot access due to poverty,” Ikome said.The divide is not unique to Cameroon. Across Africa, political elites have often sought healthcare or maintained homes abroad, even as public services at home struggle.For Bime, the question is more personal: Will he live to see another president?After decades of waiting for change, he worries he may not – and that Biya could outlive him and many others who are not part of the country’s elite.“Anytime they have a cold, they run overseas and are taken care of, but the other Cameroonians are dying because of lack of care,” he said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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