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CNN Live Event/Special
President Trump Addresses The White House Correspondents' Dinner For The First Time Since The Botched April Dinner. Aired 10- 10:50p ET
Aired July 24, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And that was actually Don Lemon, I think.
You know, when I said that, he's the dumbest man on television, I said, you know, when you say some things, you never make a comeback. It's not like, "Oh, gee, hey, Don, let's have dinner some night." But I know what I'm saying.
And then you have Bette Midler and Jane Fonda actually held a concert to protest the first UFC fight. They didn't want to see the fight, and very few people want. They had -- they held an event, like, three people showed up. And given the choice between seeing some of the really beat up faces of the UFC, almost everyone shows the people in the UFC, it was between the two of them or the UFC.
And what about Bruce Springsteen? What the hell happened to that guy? He looks like hell. I don't care what anyone says. I'm not supposed to say -- I'm sure he doesn't like the way I look, but I don't look so bad But in a recent concert, Bruce, all he did was talk politics. He ought to run for office, that'd be interesting.
But all he talked about -- he made four political speeches in his three-hour show. The tour has been renamed bored in the USA and his new song was so bad that Chris Christie, who's like a fan, you know, he goes out and tells everybody how he hates Chris Christie. Keep that guy out of my -- and I see Chris Christie there again, high fiving Bruce Springsteen in the aisle. And Bruce Springsteen saw him and didn't even lift his hand up. And I just want to -- because I used to be friendly with Chris.
Chris, when somebody doesn't like you, write them off. Forget it. You had billions of people in the world. You don't have to make a jerk out of yourself. But usually, a comedian hosts this dinner, and I think we sort of changed it. So, now, we're going to have somebody who I think is really spectacular.
But I've watched comedians get up to the dinner -- because I have been here actually quite a few times. People don't realize. And there's one time in particular when Barack Hussein Obama hosted it. Do you know who that is? And he hit me hard. But actually, he hit me with respect.
I was sitting with Melania at a table and you had Brooklyn Decker, supermodel at a table right next to it. And she -- I really always will like her. She's married to a great tennis player, Andy. And she was at the table, not at my table. And I have watched this clip thousands of times. They keep playing it because they think that was evening, I decided to run for president. It was not. In fact, I loved the evening.
I looked at my wife. I said, can you believe it? All these people, that's all they're doing is talking about me. I love this dinner. It's true. And Obama was nice. You know, it's amazing how things work out. He actually showed a picture of the White House with a big Trump on top, like I put a sign. And, you know, I'm sort of doing that when you think about it, right? I mean, he wasn't really wrong.
But no, he was respectful. He was good. And it had -- but it had nothing to do. It had nothing to do. I just decided that I wanted to make America great again. This had nothing to do with that dinner. I've gotten so many -- yes. I've gotten so many calls, and for years they've been saying, was that the moment you decided to run? Really? No.
I left that night and press was there. A lot of the same people that I see, they said, did you have a good time? Unbelievable. And some thought I didn't have. But I did have. And I really -- I always remember, though, Brooklyn. She was so angry. She was much angrier than me. She was angry. She thought they were mocking me. And they really weren't. It was just one of those things. And I had a great time.
But I left and I thought of -- thought -- I was there three or four times before that. But I sort of thought, wow, that dinner is really something special. And then I ran. I got elected. I thought the press treated me very, very unfairly. And I don't know. I think I made the right decision because you hate to go where maybe you're not wanted. But they did want me. They wanted me for ratings and they wanted me for other reasons, but not for love.
And I said, you know, I'm not going to go. First time that ever happened, I think, was that the first time just about presidents always came. And I didn't go for four years because I got treated terribly by the press, you know, in my opinion, unfairly. I know unfairly because I know the facts, but I got treated unfairly. I didn't go.
And this year, I was called by your president and your chairman and all of the people. And they said, we'd like to do it. And I say, you know what, with time, time goes by, time passes, and you sort of look at life a little bit differently. I said, let's do it. And I didn't know it was going to turn out the way it did. It turned out to be the biggest event in the history of your day. That was by far the biggest, right? For all the wrong reasons.
But as I said before, a lot was learned from that evening. So much having to do with so many different things, including security.
[22:05:02] But it's an honor to do it. This is my first. I mean, I've been to it numerous times, but as president, I haven't been here. And I'm glad. And I said -- they said, would you do it next year? I said, I will be back next year. Now, if you get really, really nasty, maybe not. I don't know. But we're going to be back next year.
Well, Jacqui (ph) would treat me very badly.
TRUMP: But this year, the association decided not to have a comedian. So, they considered using Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, these guys, they -- they're terrible. They're terrible. Stephen Colbert, these are people without talent. They get a lot -- they have talent. You know who has talent? Their agents getting them the money they get. They have no talent. But they are not comedians. They're not funny people. They're angry people. They're sick people.
But the association really put on a big show and they have somebody very special. I look forward to seeing him. And so they thought about going with a professional clown for entertainment. But Adam "Shifty" Schiff was not available. You know, he's known -- I called him -- I hate some people, you know? I shouldn't say this. I'm president. I'm not supposed to hate. I'm supposed to love everybody. But he's a terrible person. He's a liar.
And I called him watermelon head, because he has the largest head I've ever seen with the smallest neck, pencil neck. How does that big, fat, ugly head stand on a -- on a little pencil -- pencil neck?
And then I'm told that even Rosie O'Donnell reached out from Ireland. She really wanted to be here in order to honor me. She loves me very much. And she was desperate to come back to the United States and pay her respects to Donald J. Trump. But that didn't work out, unfortunately, because nobody wanted her to come back, actually. But she's one of the greatest sufferers of Trump derangement syndrome. She is a sick young woman -- sick older woman, I guess now, I have to say.
So instead we're honored to have for entertainment the very talented mentalist Oz Pearlman. Oz Pearlman.
And everything -- everybody, they said, are you going to stay? I said, yeah, I'll stay. I mean, I think I'll stay. What the hell else am I going to do? I've got Iran. I've got this. I've got that. Which is all going extremely well. Don't believe the fake news.
You know, it's the only thing I've ever -- we were talking before, I said, so we've hit Iran very hard. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone, 250 jets no longer, 159 boats, good boats. In fact, I said, why the hell didn't we keep them? We could've used them. But 159 boats, all at the bottom of the sea. They have no radar. They are very few drones left despite what you see. And every once in a while they're going to set some things up. But they don't have much left.
And, by the way, they are talking to us right now. They would love to make a deal. I don't think they're ready to. I don't think it's time yet. But I'm willing to listen. But they cannot have a nuclear weapon. We don't want to see Washington, D.C., or any of our cities or Israel or, frankly, the Middle East destroyed with a nuclear weapon because I know the power of nuclear weapons. I see it. I get to see it. We're not going to let that happen. So this is all about we will not let them have a nuclear weapon.
(APPLAUSE)
And they would use it. They would use it if they had it.
But, Oz, I do have one question about what happened that time, because he was there. How the hell did you not see that coming? He sees everything.
(LAUGHTER)
He sees everything. He's telling me about your grandmother and your this. Why the hell didn't -- we've got to ask him that question when he gets up here. Why didn't he see that coming?
But, of course, this evening, it's really all about the fake news media and your handling of prizes in writing and producing and performing made-up stories like the Academy Awards. You know, Academy Awards used to be the -- the epitome of ratings, outside of the Super Bowl, it got the second-most ratings. Now it is down in the dumps. Nobody wants to watch it anymore because they took on Trump. They hit me all night long, they hit me.
The winner is so and so, I want to talk about Donald Trump, I hate this man. Nobody wants to hear this stuff, right, Peter? Nobody wants to. Did you ever see the ratings? They used to have 48 million people, now they have two people watching. But they'll learn their lesson.
But I want to personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It's a fake -- she shouldn't get the award, it was a fake, But I didn't mind. I said, Kaitlan, congratulations. But it was fake, there's no question about it. But she's a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, Kaitlan, do you ever smile?
[22:10:00]
Smile. You have a nice position. You are at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan, just smile.
But we attack and I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn't her on the Bud Light can. It was Dylan Mulvaney. And Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 billion in market cap.
That was the worst commercial ever made, by the way, for those few people that want to hear that. Most people don't care, but I would. I wouldn't want to hire Dylan anytime soon.
Think of it, they hired Dylan Mulvaney, and their market cap has gone down by $35 billion. Who wrote that commercial?
And then you have writer Josh Dawsey. He also received -- he's been killing me for years. No, he's been -- and yet tonight he shakes my hand. He hugs me. Everything nice. He kills me.
Josh is amazing. He writes more stories than any human being. There's nobody that writes more than Josh. He'll write four stories about me a day, all different subjects.
I mean, I had the other day three stories and one on the -- I -- he was upset about this. One was on page seven, three were on page one. They were all written by Josh.
But he's hit the big time. And he's a workhorse. And yet, he's almost unhireable. You know, you hired -- he's just one of these guys.
"The Wall Street Journal" is lucky to have him. But you -- really, it's a -- it's unbelievable. He's almost unhireable.
CNN is also here, and I'm very disappointed they didn't bring fake Tapper because he's had a rough couple of years, fake has. You know, he calls me up every once in a while. If I pick it up, I pick up my phone.
I used to go to this young lady. I'd say, any calls from the press? No, sir. I said, Oh. Now I'm the President of the United States, right?
I'd say to Steven Cheung. Is Steven here someplace? Where's Steven? He's one of the toughest human beings I've ever met.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Don't ever wrestle, Steven. You'll be in big trouble.
But I say, Steven, let me ask you, did the press call? No, sir.
You know, when I was a developer, I'd get a call every half an hour. For whatever reason, I always got disproportionate press. So I said, Steven, nobody called? No, sir.
Two hours later, I say, Hi, Steve. How are we doing? Everything good? Anybody call? No, sir. No press calls.
I say, I'm president. Nope. They never call. So this went on for about a week.
I'd say, Karoline, did the press call? No, sir. No calls. I said, nothing. It's over a week. I haven't received a call.
So I said, you know, I'm going to give the press my phone number. That was the stupidest thing I ever did. I'm getting a call every 3.7 minutes.
Steven, I don't know where the hell you've been, but the press calls, I'm getting calls. Ring, ring -- I was with somebody today. He said, I've never heard a phone ring as much. It's press.
Now, I look at the thing and usually just delete, delete, delete. Every once in a while, it'll be one of the people in this room that I like. And I'll pick it up like this one right here calls me on occasion, right?
She'll call me and she says, hello, sir. How are you? We want to talk about some horrible subject, like a horrible, depressing subject.
I say, Jacqui, I don't want to talk about it. Congratulations, however, on your new marriage. But I don't want to talk about it.
But it's true. And people call me now. And so for weeks, I go with no calls. And I learned then that both of them -- they feel that I'm doing a great job, and they feel I'm above it all, and that no person, hundreds of people call -- no person is good enough to talk to Trump, and so we don't even bother telling you.
That's not the way it works, Karoline. You have to let me know, because sometimes I do want -- I do like to speak to the press, but now I have the best lesson I've ever had. It rings -- and just so you understand, you're much better putting your name, because if there's no name, I just can't do that. You know, I pick up every once in a while.
Hello. I'm from Reno, Nevada. We're a startup paper. We're calling it "The Reno Express".
I said, do you believe I'm the President of the United States? "Mr. President, could I have your views on Iran?" And I just hang up.
No, I get the craziest calls. I mean, some of them -- my wife said, I can't believe you do this. This is a hell of a way to live. But sometimes they get calls from very important -- sometimes I can straighten out stories that are going to be fake. And I can make them from a fake story to a good story.
I always find that when you don't speak to the press, you always get a bad story. When you do speak to the press, you have a shot at getting a good story. Oh, look.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Look, if I were a reporter, and let's say I'm a big reporter, I work for the failing "New York Times", or I work for -- I don't know, do they ever come to these dinners?
[22:15:01]
Didn't they cancel out a long time ago? Big mistake, they should be here.
But I get a call. I've always found that, you know, speaking to them, you just do better. You do better, when you can, when you have the time. You speak to the reporter, you treat the reporter with respect.
Sometimes, now, there are reporters where it doesn't matter. You can be so nice to them, it doesn't matter. You get treated unfairly.
But you have a lot of great reporters where when you speak to them, you can get your point across. And that's a -- that's a good thing. But some people say that Jake Tapper is a great investigative reporter in D.C. And that's why, after moderating our debate, it only took him one year to break the story that Joe Biden might possibly have suffered from cognitive decline. It took him one year. He wrote a book about how great he was mentally, not too good.
And I don't like Biden because Biden was very unfair to a lot of people. But Jill Biden insists that Joe would have beaten me in 2024, even though he was way down. She said he was way behind in the polls because he was seriously ahead. She felt he was going to win because he was seriously ahead on deceased voters. He was leading in the deceased crowd and there were a lot of them. You're finding out there's a lot of them. Look at the numbers that just came out yesterday.
And it's traditional that at least one or two potential presidential hopefuls attend the Correspondents' Dinner, but many of them seem to have really chickened out. I was disappointed that Gavin Newscum didn't show up. He didn't show up. He should be here. But I heard that he recently said that we will lose our country if we don't fight fire with fire.
And to be fair, there's only one thing we know about Gavin, and that's that he definitely doesn't want to fight fire with water. He's got a lot of water, never uses it. What a disaster. That should have never happened.
But Gavin Newscum recently did a career threatening one of the worst interviews I've ever seen where he said that he can't read a speech. He's incapable of reading a speech. He's a low IQ person. He's smarter, however, than all of the people in the room. And then he gets sued for being a racist. OK, when he said that. But he basically said he has various mental incapacities. He has difficulty and various other ailments mentally.
And I'm looking at I said, this is the worst interview -- I'm watching this interview, I said, this is the worst interview I've ever seen given by a professional politician. I've been watching politicians for a long time, mostly on the previous side, because I haven't been doing this too long. How am I doing? Not bad for the number of minutes spent. Not bad. But with Gavin -- so, he said that all these things and I said, anybody running against him, all they have to do is take that one interview and you can't lose.
I actually put out a statement that Gavin Newsom has come out and said he will not be running for president because nobody can say what he said about himself and survive. Newsom was in big trouble when he openly admitted that Kamala was smarter than him. She said Kamala is smarter. If Kamala is smarter than someone, you don't want that person to be president of the United States of America.
Between California's policies of enabling wildfires, paying drug addicts to be homeless, giving free sex changes to illegals and telling rich people they're going to take away all of your money is going to be taken away. People are fleeing and they're fleeing in droves. We can't have that in this country. It's becoming such a horrible and dangerous location that Ilhan Omar, one of my favorites and her brother, are thinking about moving together. Very much in love.
A video has surfaced recently of Ilhan giving a speech referring to World War II as World War 11. And they asked her about that. She still thought -- she thought she got it right. But I'm not surprised because she's a low IQ person and she's also a very dishonest person and sure to get the hell out of our country. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be in our country.
She also calls her brother husband number one. Omar is reportedly being investigated for fraud. She revised her net worth. I was shocked to see that she was worth much more than $30 million. And then when the press got on her, she revised it slightly downward to less than 18,000. So, she went from much more than 30 million to 18,000.
And I know Democrats -- and the word Democrat is something that's come into fashion. I changed the E with a U. And most people don't know that dumb has a B. So, we don't have to worry about that.
[22:20:00]
It's very quiet. I thought it was quite good, but I haven't gotten much credit for that. Fake news, good. Pocahontas, good. I won't say Lyin' Ted because he's on my side. I don't talk about past conquests, but we have a lot of them. I won't talk about it.
They got a whole table full of Republicans and they say, no, don't mention my fricking name. Will you please? But we've had a lot of good names. But the "Dumocrats" are there to destroy wealth. And, honestly, they've gone absolutely crazy. Gavin "Newscum" is not only a man who really wants to run for president, he's doing a bad job running his state. You can't have somebody like a J.B. Pritzker, who I understand is not president, sadly, but, you know, some people say, never use the fat word. And I don't. I would never call anybody fat. I have my own problems. You know? It's not like I'm perfect.
Sir, in the back, don't call him a fat pig, OK? That's -- I'm sticking up for him. Don't call him -- you, you can't do that, sir. You can't call J.B. Pritzker a fat pig, please. All right? Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Everyone's trying to figure out, who is that guy? Does he exist? But the nice part is, when you do that, the press can't get you, because I'm defending a man who obviously has a problem. Actually, he's lost a lot of weight. I saw him recently, he lost quite a bit of weight. I don't know what the hell, he has got no chance, believe me, anything he does, the family threw him out of the business.
A number of other potential "Dumocrat" contenders sadly refused to show up tonight. We invited Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren. She's referred to to Pocahontas because -- in fact, I had to apologize. People came up and they said, we want you to apologize to Elizabeth Warren for calling her Pocahontas. And I ended up apologizing to the real Pocahontas. But Elizabeth Warren was supposedly of Indian heritage. And then she took the test, and she only had one thousand twenty-fourth Native American. And I said, you know what? I have -- I think I'm more of an Indian than she is. So this is what we have to deal with. But Senator Warren did not accept our invitation to debate. I wanted to debate her in various and sundry things. And she decided not to do it. And I decided to bury the hatchet. It doesn't matter.
And she -- well, I'm not going to say this next one. You want to hear this one? How bad? She wasn't high up on her totem pole. Who the hell wrote that? No, she's bad news.
I wanted to make sure that Jack Smith -- deranged Jack Smith, remember? He went after me for about two years. How did he do? Not too good. I'm in the White House and he's not doing as well. I was going to say, he's in a different kind of a house. But he's a deranged human being. He's a bad prosecutor.
You know, prosecutors are very important. A great prosecutor, a fair prosecutor, but that's the great prosecutors, the ones that are fair. They're very important to our country. But this guy was a deranged lunatic. I saw his invitation tonight. He was invited because, you know? But I put in a private text to Chuck Grassley. And Chuck saw them and he did certain thing. And then you had one -- one man that we had, who should be here, he turned Palestinian.
This was a man who was 100 percent for Israel, 100 percent, Chuck Schumer. "Cryin'" Chuck. Remember, he cried at the airport over illegal immigrants. They were the fakest tears. There were people throwing water at his face. But now he's a proud, very proud Palestinian. In fact, I'm going to send him a beautiful Palestinian outfit tomorrow so he can greet Bibi Netanyahu when he comes to town next week, along with the mayor who I'm sure would love to meet Bibi.
They're not treating Bibi too well. But Chuck wanted to join us tonight, but he didn't want to be violating many parts of the Palestinian rules, regulations, and certainly he didn't want to violate Sharia law, his new -- his new founding.
And all joking aside, I do think we need term limits in Congress. I think term limits are very important because I see what's happening. I see what's happening. The other day a senator I knew, got a text, a great guy, from his wife. And she said, when you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me. And he said, I can't do both. You know what -- you know? In other words, ha- ha, can't go up the stairs and make love. Does anybody get that? Well, I thought that was actually pretty good.
That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole frickin' stupid speech that they wrote.
(LAUGHTER)
[22:25:00]
It was the only good one. And that went down with not exactly great laughter. But think, you know, in other words, you can't go up the stairs and make love too, you know? So, we're looking for term limits. Does anybody understand this stuff?
(LAUGHTER)
But I really do wonder whether the Democrats are trying to lose the midterms. In Maine, they nominated a guy with a Nazi tattoo, but don't worry, "Dumocrats," word is that Platner, his replacement, he throws bottles at women. This guy throws bottles. This guy is another lunatic, by the way.
TRUMP: Although, I think Platner might have done surprisingly well because we're in the age of Trump. Just call it what you want. People can do well today.
Platner, I don't know. But, you know, people don't have the guts to stick it out, but it looked like he was guilty of a lot of stuff. He certainly didn't defend himself very well.
In Texas, the Democrats are running a candidate named James Talafreako, who hates guns, hates oil, hates sex, hates women, and who said he is, quote, "a Christian who hates Christianity." Other than that, his -- I think his platform is quite good.
And that means that he's not going to do very well against Ken Paxton, who hopefully in Texas is going to win.
But Talafreako, he's Alfred -- you know what he looks like to me? Alfred E. Neuman. You remember Alfred E. Neuman? "Mad Magazine".
I said, that guy is Alfred E. Neuman. Can't imagine he'd win.
While I have all of the press here in one place, I have to say that we're having an amazing load of accomplishments that the media never talks about.
For example, 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.
Most of the press lives here in Washington, D.C., and you should be thankful for me for what my administration and I have done to make our nation's capital, which was one of the most dangerous and unsafe cities anywhere in the world, one of the safest cities in the United States. Crime is down 88 percent, and our capital is shining again with 62 monuments, statues, water fountains looking more beautiful.
The graffiti is all gone. The tents are all moved out of the parks. The fences are all done. Our capital looks like it's really in good shape.
And people coming here, people in the White House, they work in the White House, they all say young women, young guys walk up. They say, "Thank you, sir."
Two years ago, we lived in a dangerous city. We lived in a city where 150 people were killed a year. And now we have almost a crime-free city. Our National Guard has done an incredible job, and we've removed over 5,000 career criminals.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: You know, we removed -- there's one stat. I think it's a great stat. It's -- to me, it's fantastic.
Two percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime. That's something you can fix, and we fixed it. We moved out over 5,000 career criminals out of Washington, D.C., and we have the greatest capital in the world.
Again, it's beautiful. It's thriving. The restaurants are thriving.
You couldn't get into a restaurant because they didn't have -- all the restaurants were closing. And if you even got in, you felt unsafe. People were getting into Ubers, and they were being attacked when they were in an Uber.
It's not happening anymore. We have tough, smart people, and they have done a fantastic job.
Washington, D.C. is safe again. You can't get into a restaurant. The restaurants are opening up. They're opening up all over the city.
They can't get -- it's the exact opposite. They can't get space.
But mostly I've given up on you and the media so that now I just gave up in you and I'm number one on TikTok. Did you see that I'm number one -- Steven, is that true? I'm number one on TikTok. So how could they be so bad?
Five hundred and twenty -- think of this, 425 billion views. Can you believe that, Peter? I mean, let's go, Peter.
I gave up on you people. I gave up on traditional press. And it obviously worked, because we did win in a landslide.
I mean, somebody's got to be saying something good about me. But TikTok, good old TikTok. And I was able to get it sold to a group of very wealthy people, mostly Americans, I was told.
President Xi, who's a man that I get along with very well, he was a hard no for the sale of TikTok. They all said he's a hard no. I said, well, let's call -- put your group together. They put it together, billions -- hundreds of billions of dollars.
I called up President Xi. I said, President, look, these are American people.
[22:30:00]
They're wonderful people. In fact, one of them happens to own CBS, actually. I mentioned his name.
I said, these are wonderful people, and it would be a good thing. Does it mean anything, President? It's nothing.
It's nothing. They love your country. We'd love to see you approve the deal.
And he goes, all right. That was it.
It was done and we sold TikTok. And he's a friend of mine.
And he's not contributing to problems like other people contribute to problems. So we get along.
But we made the deal. But number one on TikTok is Trump, and that's probably why we won. But for all of the trouble that you give me, you give me a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache.
I hope all of you know that I believe in the free press more than anyone in this room does. Maybe not quite.
But that's why I'm proud to be the most open and transparent President in history. They called me that. You know who calls me that? Karoline.
That's about it.
Would anybody else call me that? I think Peter would call me that. Am I the most transparent? Biden never used to answer your questions. He'd ask Biden 20 questions, he'd never get an answer.
Who's the most transparent President, Peter? Who? Look at him. It's the first time he's tongue-tied.
I cannot believe it. He's not going to be happy tomorrow.
But 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.
No, it's true.
When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.
"The New York Times" the other day had five stories about me. You know, before I got into politics, in my whole life, I had seven front- page stories. This is years of success.
I think six were good, one was bad. I had five stories, seven, five good. Yes, I had a total of seven stories on the front page of the "New York Times."
It's not bad. Now I average about three or four a day. All different topics.
All bad, everything bad. But here we are. I mean, here we are.
In fact, when I'm finished, I'm going right back to the Oval Office. So I have to be doing okay.
But we are all doing good together. That's why tonight, to show just how much I care about the press and I want to save your ratings, I'm pleased to announce my intention to, and this is somewhat of a scoop, my intention to run for a fourth term as President of the United States. I will be doing that, I will be having an official.
In fact, I think I have, yes. I won three times. Now I'm going to do it again.
Thank you. I'm going to do it.
It should be easy. I'm getting very good at running for President. Now I won three times. Did very well the second time, by the way.
It's a rigged election, but we'll have to talk about it. You know, it's interesting. When you come back and you do a good job like we did, and you don't care about it so much, but we do have to tighten up these elections because they really are in seriously bad shape.
But on a serious note, I want to say once again, and I just want to thank you all. It's been an interesting evening. I didn't really know what to expect, and it's far worse than I actually thought, if you want to know that.
But I didn't know exactly what to expect, and I've made a lot of friends tonight. I've made a lot of good friends tonight, probably made some enemies also.
But it's been an experience that is something that we've all shared together because we're all in this room tonight because most of us went through a period of trauma from just a short while ago. And, you know, some people said they wanted to come, but they were afraid to come, and you people weren't afraid to come. There were a lot of people that said, Jacqui, they don't really, you know, they didn't have the courage to come, and we don't want that to happen, and I'm sure it's not going to happen.
We're going to do things. Again, I want to thank our law enforcement. It keeps us safe.
All law enforcement. We have the greatest people on Earth. You know, we had, two years ago, we had the worst record of recruitment in, as an example, the military.
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Coast Guard. Space Force, I love Space Force.
Look at all that shooting we're able to do from space. That was my baby.
But all of the branches of, you couldn't get people to join. This was two years ago. And last week, you probably saw, some of you wrote the story.
We have the single best recruiting of people into our armed forces that we have ever had in the history of our country. We have, they are brimming over with great people. And that's a big statement.
And that also goes for the police departments where they were having a tremendous problem recruiting. You can't get into a police department now. If you're looking for a job, it's very tough.
[22:35:02]
And that also includes our great fire departments because people forget about them. They're unbelievable, the job they do.
So I just want to thank you. Look, we're on the cusp of something big.
And I call it, and this, I'm being very serious when I say this, that this is the golden age of America. We have $19.2 trillion being spent in our country.
A record was China, I think it was 10 years ago, 3 trillion.
Trillion is a lot. Four years, they went less than 1 trillion under Biden. And we have $19.2 trillion and this is a period of actually 13 months, not even current, because we're here a little bit longer than that.
But that was as of reporting dates. $19.2 trillion is being spent.
Factories are coming. Toyota just announced they're going to be building the biggest car plant in the world. They're leaving Mexico, they're coming here. Tariffs did that and maybe November 5th did that too, the election.
But our country is doing things that nobody's ever seen before. And it is true. We were, and you've heard me say this, we were a dead country two years ago.
Other leaders would see me and they'd say it's a miracle. President Xi told me that a few weeks ago in China, and he's coming here on September, I think, 24th, coming in September, the end of September. It's going to be exciting.
But he said the same thing. The king of Saudi Arabia said it.
Everyone said almost the same words. We thought you were a dead country. We never thought you had a chance, you were never going to make it back.
And in a period of a year, a period of one year, you made it the hottest country anywhere in the world. We all did that together. It's not me, we all did it together and we do.
We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and we're going to keep it going. And I just want to say, this is a room I have tremendous respect for the people in this room.
Sometimes I don't feel you treat me fair. Maybe you do. I don't know, I don't feel that but sometimes you treat me very fairly.
And I have a lot of respect for your profession. Your profession is amazing.
And I just want to thank you for having me. And it's been fun. And I've met a lot of great people.
And, you know, I used an expression. I've used it right from the beginning. I did this for one reason, to Make America Great Again.
And that's what's happening right before your very eyes. We have made America great again, and it's going to get a lot greater.
So thank you all very much. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you, thank you very much.
(LIVE VIDEO FEED ENDS)
LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Was that the President of the United States?
Well, it was his first ever speech at a White House Correspondents' Dinner. And he was, in fact, speaking.
JOHN BERGMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It lasted about an hour and four minutes. And the question you might reasonably have is, why?
Before we bring in the panel, I want to read you a statement from CNN in the wake of the President's remarks tonight about CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who was honored tonight for her breaking news reporting.
The statement reads, quote, "Kaitlan Collins is an exceptional, trusted journalist being honored tonight for a depth of knowledge in the context she provides to audiences all over the world. She reports every day from the White House and the field with real strength and tenacity and skillfully brings that reporting to the anchor chair and CNN platforms every day. We stand by her to the fullest extent." And we do.
COATES: And we should. And we must. And the President just talked about the respect he has for the journalists in this room. Frankly, I didn't see much of it in the last hour of his speech. But the President made additional attacks on some of our other colleagues, Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper. And given that, I want to read this from CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson.
"We stand by our journalists and the integrity and fair-mindedness with which the CNN team reports the news. Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution. CNN will continue to exercise this right."
I am very eager to know what our panel makes of what we have heard tonight and their back, along with Daniel Dale and Brian Stelter.
I have to say, I kept in my mind the way that this derailed so quickly. He got off to a start that many thought, oh, this sort of tone might strike a chord with many people resonating. He certainly shot himself in the foot, figuratively speaking, in terms of a missed opportunity, in my estimation. What are your thoughts?
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I think the worst thing you can say is that it just wasn't funny at all. It just wasn't funny.
It was mean and small, but you can be mean and small and funny. This was mean and small and not funny. And he didn't talk about any American besides himself and his enemies.
[22:40:00]
There are people at home who can't figure out how to pay for gas. There are people at home who worry about their nephew who is serving overseas. There are people at home who have real problems who would love to see somebody reflect their reality and maybe make fun of some of their enemies, some of their problems.
He missed the entire opportunity to talk to those people, and he started off as this cuddly, care-bear Trump, and then he turned into this rabid, grisly Trump who just wandered around in the backyard attacking things and then wandered off the stage. And it's hard to be disappointed, given what I've seen for the past 10 years, but it's like Lucy and the football. Here I am once again, disappointed.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, and just from a performance standpoint and comparing it to previous Presidents at these events, he bombed. He objectively bombed. There were missed opportunities.
Listen, I didn't think he was going to work a lot of substance into it, but as I said, he's someone who's actually very capable of humor, and instead he went for really low-ball, unfunny jokes, like at least make the punchline land. And it's been reported that comedian Tony Hinchcliffe helped advise on his remarks. This has his hands all over it.
You'll remember him from that infamous Madison Square Garden rally calling Puerto Rico an island of trash. He's somebody who really just goes low. He demeans women, he leans into racist tropes.
And I felt like those fingerprints were on this speech. It's such a missed opportunity because it is one thing you can't say is Trump is a showman, but that was not Obama at the White House correspondent, it wasn't George Bush. It was he bombed.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER AIDE TO GEORGE W. BUSH: He started the speech with something that I felt was good and necessary. We do not yield to political violence. I thought that was probably the best line of the speech, given the nature of the event tonight and he ended the speech by saying, I have great respect for your profession.
Now the middle of it is going to be controversial because some of the jokes landed and some of the jokes didn't. I thought the best joke was the RFK joke, you know, I hope you enjoyed the beef, he ran over the cow. I think that was probably the best joke. Some of the jokes veered off into very sort of ornery insults, and that's not going to land for many audiences. But I did like the part about not yielding to political violence, and I did like the fact that he did show respect to the press and their role in our American politics.
BERGMAN: The problem was the other 59 minutes of the one-hour, four- minute speech. That was the issue, that kind of donut hole of everything else there. And look, journalists, we're big boys and girls, right?
And I don't necessarily want to dwell on the attacks on us and our colleagues because they're just objectively great reporters, and we love them and we love the work they do.
The question I have, the bigger question I have, is why do this this way? What possible advantage does he get out of a speech that maybe different people are watching, maybe more people are watching, maybe has a different feel because it's the second time around in the White House Correspondents' Dinner?
JONES: But look, the vast majority of people are just going to consume it as social media bites and bits. And so he's got a team of people out there, they'll push out the stuff that they think is good or landed or is funny.
But it's just like our expectation is you're going to use this moment to show your T.V. performance chops and just do great television. Instead, he just kind of does this rambling grievance tour. Some of these things will maybe play well on social media.
COATES: Listen to who he mentioned. I kept a little bit of a running list of the people he talked about, right?
Lawrence O'Donnell, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Kimball, Colbert, Fallon, Adam Schiff, Tapper, Kaitlan Collins, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar, Ted Cruz, who he called a conquest, J.B. Pritzker, Jack Smith, Chuck Schumer, I mean, Talarico. That's just a couple of the people that he mentioned. It took over 30 minutes before he even talked about the war with Iran.
He did not talk about ICE, not one time. I don't think I heard him discuss the dignified transfers of the people who died in the war just recently.
I mean, there were so many moments during this speech when, I mean, call me naive, but I sometimes like to hear from a President talk about the issues that are pressing on all the American people because I look at politics as the effect on the people, and I think the effect in that room, to your larger point, this was a moment a couple months from before the midterm elections, though I wonder why he chose this route as opposed to one that would have been advantageous or dignified.
JONES: Well, every one of those names are legitimate targets for a funny joke, right?
I mean, like, those are all newsmakers. I could see it, but none of them were funny. They were all just, like, literal bombs. Like, it was just bomb after bomb after bomb.
It's like, we're not Iran. We're the American people. Quit bombing.
BERGMAN: Let's go to Brian Stelter, who was watching alongside. Brian, how do you feel about the last hour and four minutes of your life?
[22:45:00]
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: You could hear a President who wants to talk about the power of the media.
He knows the power of the media. He loves it, he resents it, he craves it, he wants to control it, so he insults the journalists that he can't control. He gives shout-outs to the media executives who he thinks are his allies, whether they are or not.
He repeatedly mentioned the Ellisons, the owners of Paramount, who are trying to buy CNN and our parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
Today, Paramount was dealt a big setback. They've had to agree to a timeline that will delay that merger for many months, probably into 2027, a big setback for Paramount. But he was praising Larry and David Ellison, calling both men his friends and saying he believes they're going to make good changes to CBS.
Paramount executives don't always feel the same way that the President does about the vision for the company. But, you know, Trump thinks he has them in his pocket, and that is problematic that he has that impression. He wants to control the media, but listen to the conversation we're having right now and the conversation on other networks and all across social media.
People are open and able and free to criticize the American President, and that's what this night's actually all about, that celebration of the First Amendment.
John, Laura, I once had to give a comedic speech in high school, and I totally bombed, and it was humiliating, and I kind of feel like that's what I watched. I was giving me flashbacks to 11th grade in high school tonight.
BERGMAN: I'm sorry that you had that triggering.
COATES: Do you want to talk about it more, Brian? I feel like --
JENNINGS: I don't know if she hasn't gotten over it yet.
COATES: I think Trump would be more resilient at that particular point in time. But, you know, it's important to note, I mean, the idea of, we do have expectations.
This was not supposed to be a regular speech. It wasn't necessarily, it wasn't, say, the union address, for example. We're not thinking that.
But the idea of the derailment, some of these jokes were actually on prompter. I mean, he was talking about that. I thought that was odd.
He thought, oh, he must be derailing. And then he mentioned, oh, who writes this? Who's putting this on there? And I thought, why?
JENNINGS: At one point, he appeared to get annoyed with the material.
COATES: Yes.
JENNINGS: It was on the prompter, and I think maybe he realized that some of the things that were on the prompter were just not landing. By the way, that's a tough room. I mean, because, let's be honest, a lot of the people in there don't like him.
They're not inclined to laugh at his jokes. They're not inclined to be of his persuasion. And so to land something in there has got to be really good.
And I think I got the feeling he got somewhat annoyed with the material. I was surprised he didn't take this opportunity, major opportunity, to make some news, like something that he wanted to announce or some point he wanted to drive home, and they chose not to use it.
GRIFFIN: This is a bit of a throwback, but Ivanka Trump, his daughter, once did part of the roast at the gridiron dinner, and she did it like a traditional roast. I think she had comedians help her. It was funny. She did it the way that you do.
She took shots at herself, at the White House, at other people in the room, and it was the kind of style. It was brief, but it was well- received in the room. It's actually not, I mean, listen, comedy's hard.
I wouldn't presume to know how to do it, but it's not hard to land the material with this audience. There's nothing Washington journalists love more than the media and discussing it, but it just felt like, who was this audience for? And it felt like dated material, like Elizabeth Warren, news scum, like we don't have any new material.
Let's go to CNN's Daniel Dale, who had the, I think, busy job of fact- checking this speech. Daniel, what did you find there?
DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: John, there was a lot of nonsense on the supposed subject of the speech, the press, you know, calling people we know dumb, fake, unsmiling. You and I know that that stuff is nonsense, it's false, but I won't dwell on that because the President also tried to kind of sneak in a bunch of falsehoods on matters of substance to the extent that he addressed them.
So, we heard him, again, lie about the election of six years ago, claiming that he won in 2020, that it was rigged. Again, we're six years into this. We know that is wrong, we know he lost a free and fair election to Joe Biden. We know he's presented no evidence to debunk that truth. So, just a lie again. As I predicted pre-speech, he also claimed that he had taken in $19.2 trillion in investment in the U.S. That figure is a fabrication of fiction even the White House can't substantiate it.
The White House uses a figure of $10.7 trillion on its website, and even that is just a wild exaggeration, counting a bunch of vague pledges that have not come to fruition. He spoke of Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, as an almost crime-free city.
Yes, crime in D.C. has declined, along with crime in much of the nation, after the President's takeover of law enforcement there. But crime very much exists. It's not down 88 percent.
A headline from the local media just last week said, quote, "fatal shooting marks fifth homicide in D.C. in seven days." So, people continue to be killed in the capital.
And I'll also note that he said that, talking about the Iran war, he said Iran doesn't have much left in terms of material, like drones, like missiles. That's a change from some of his previous remarks when he's claimed that Iran's entire military is gone, that they have nothing at all left.
So, I thought of this as kind of the President's own fact check of himself, admitting that he had gone too far in claiming that Iran was completely obliterated by the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
[22:50:04]
COATES: Daniel Dale, thank you so much. Everyone, thank you. Our coverage continues. "NewsNight with Abby Phillip" starts right now. Good luck.
