Newt & The Donald, Bosom Buddies

Strange bedfellows are the essence of the over-packed and over-hyped White House Correspondents' Dinner. Where else, on a single night, can you see Scarlett Johansson and Ben Bernanke, or Sean Penn, Mad Man Jim Cramer, and Colin Powell?But for me, the most surreal sight on Saturday night was Donald Trump, who was absolutely mobbed in the hours before President Obama started taking comedic potshots at him. Everyone was trying to get a word with The Donald, or just get close and gawk.

I was a couple of feet away when Newt Gingrich came over and the two men started backslapping and laughing their butts off. Who knew they were so friendly? Aren't they supposed to be running against each other? Or are both men going to opt out of the 2012 race?

The cellphone photo you see here is of the two men, with Newt's wife Calista in the middle. Trump was at the dinner as the guest of The Washington Post, which is taking some heat for the invitation. Here's the Post's own columnist, Dana Milbank:

"On Thursday, The Washington Post editorializes that Donald Trump has been campaigning on 'bogus' issues and that he should 'cease and desist.' An article in the news pages the same day reports that the great orange charlatan’s 'simply wild speculation” has “almost no basis in fact.'

"Then, on Saturday night, Post reporters and editors, in black-tie finest, go to the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner to host their invited guests, including. . . Donald Trump."

Ah, how awkward.

Then again, the point of inviting big-name guests to Washington's nerd prom is to get attention, and the Post certainly accomplished that.

By the way, Trump phoned in to Fox News on Sunday and was asked about dropping those F-bombs in a speech in Las Vegas. Trump to Fox on his F-bombs: He said it's a "word of emphasis" (uh, yeah) but "probably I won't do it anymore."

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Howard Kurtz

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