White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2017: Hasan Minhaj mocks Donald Trump, media

Tonight, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner arrived, and we assumed going into them that there were going to be many specific things that happened with host Hasan Minhaj. The Daily Show comedian was responsible for trying to take on both Donald Trump and the media, even though the President chose to skip out on the proceedings.

“We are here to celebrate the press, not the presidency.” This may have been the most important line said, but that was before Minhaj even took the stage and it came courtesy of Jeff Mason, the head of the White House Correspondents’ Association. We also had repeated assurances during the show opening that the press were not the “enemy of the American people” or “fake news” in any way, despite whatever may be said about them in certain headlines.

It was nice to see so many different journalists celebrated over the course of the night, but we will say that much of the proceedings did go on for a rather long time. By the time that Minhaj took the stage, it was around 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. He referred to this as the “series finale” of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Also, he said “Don Rickles died” so that he didn’t have to do the comedy portion of the evening.

Minhaj didn’t waste a whole lot of time mocking specific publications. He went after USA Today first and foremost for being basic. He roasted Donald Trump Jr. for hunting elephants, Trump proper for “bombing” frequently over the course of the past month, and also the media’s coverage in general for caring about how much Trump golfs on a regular basis.

On Fox News – We knew that he was going to go hard at the cable news network, and there were some people who liked it. His Bill O’Reilly jokes were, overall, a little bit predictable. To be fair, other networks got it too, whether it be MSNBC or CNN.

Did the media in attendance love Hasan? Well, let’s just say that there were a lot of groans. We really enjoyed it, but we get why some of the people didn’t have a great sense of humor. They never do. This is one of the hardest rooms to make laugh by and large since they are so politically divided.

Probably the biggest problem that Minhaj had is that it felt like there were a ton of people out there who didn’t actually get all of his humor. We get the groans and we get the laughs, but we saw a lot of confused faces in the audiences, as well.

What did you think about Minhaj’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Be sure to share below! (Photo: C-SPAN.)