Per reporters who were in the room, the jokes Trump made—when he wasn’t outwardly attacking his political enemies—landed like lead balloons. “There were more than a few palpable cringes. When the speech concluded, many journalists remained seated and did not applaud,” writes The Washington Post‘s Maura Judkis. CNN’s Betsy Klein said that many in the room were just on their phones or talking amongst themselves. When Trump maybe-joked about running for a third term, The New York Times‘ Shawn McCreesh writes that “Most of the reporters just stared straight ahead.”
It’s not hard to see why, after an hour of harsh jabs and just plain bad comedy. In one clip that went especially viral, Trump butchers a joke about Nicki Minaj twerking at the previous WHCD, which was abandoned halfway through when a gunman rushed into the venue. The President said at one point that he confused CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins with Dylan Mulvaney. There was also this meandering joke: “Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled. Their former leaders have been removed, and they’re now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She’s a wonderful woman.” The most effective joke was about how the steaks the people in the room were from a cow that Robert Kennedyd Jr. had run over on the way there.
But Trump could tell he was bombing. When a joke about gerontocracy didn’t land, he said, “That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole fricking stupid speech. It was the only good one, and that went down with not exactly great laughter.” (As any comedian will tell you, lashing out when you’re bombing is the last thing you should do.) Poor Oz Pearlman, the mentalist who came back for round two, had to follow the act. At one point, he directly asked the room if it was alive. But per the Post, people were too burnt out from Trump’s speech to participate. Writes Judkis, “I saw several people get up and leave as he took to the stage.”
Keep scrolling for more great stories.