Obama Mocks Trump One Final Time
The president flexed his comedic muscles again, and found some low-hanging fruit in the Republican frontrunner
Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
It’s Obama’s last one.
On Saturday night, President Barack Obama took the stage at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton to deliver his final presidential simulacrum of a stand-up routine. (Obama is opening for actual comedian Larry Wilmore, the Comedy Central host.)
During Obama’s routine, he went after Donald Trump.
Yet again.
“You know I gotta talk about Trump!” the president told the crowd of journalists, Hollywood celebrities, and politicians. “Is this dinner too tacky for The Donald? What could he possibly be doing instead? Is he at home eating a Trump Steak…What’s he doing?”
The president threw in some requisite jokes about Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. He also knocked the national media for the massive attention (and free air time) it has afforded Trump.
“I hope y’all are proud of yourselves,” Obama said. “[The Donald] wanted to give his hotel business a boost, and now we’re praying that Cleveland makes it through July.”
The full Obama routine included a John Boehner cameo.
At the 2011 WHCD, President Obama famously skewered (current Republican presidential frontrunner) Trump. The real estate mogul had publicly jumped on the birther-movement bandwagon, and the White House had released Obama’s long-form birth certificate shortly before the dinner. (Trump would claim credit for forcing its release.)
So the president had his retaliatory fun with The Donald for the first time around.
“Donald Trump is here tonight!” the president began. “I know that he’s taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald…That’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
The New Yorker reported last year that Trump vowed that very evening in 2011 to have the last laugh and get back at Obama and the crowd of political and media elites who mocked and laughed at him—“perhaps even pursue the Presidency after all, no matter how nihilistically or absurdly, and redeem himself.” (For his part, Trump says that this is a “false narrative.”)
It could have been worse for Trump that year. After all, Obama could have joked about murdering him with a predator drone.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Obama’s latest jabs.