No Comedian At White House Correspondents’ Dinner, That’s Not Very Funny

Source: Silicon Bay Partners Staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT

For the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) has officially replaced the traditional comedic performer with a mentalist, Oz Pearlman.

This decision follows a tumultuous 2025 event where comedian Amber Ruffin was removed from the lineup shortly before the event following criticism from the Trump administration.

Key details about the decision to have no comedian:

The 2026 Shift: WHCA President Weijia Jiang said that featuring a mentalist offers a “fresh” and “interactive” evening to focus on celebrating the First Amendment, rather than political satire.

Administration Pressure: The shift away from comedians in 2025 and 2026 coincided with heightened tensions between the media and the returning Trump administration, which had labeled potential performers “hate-filled” and “pathetic”.

Historical Precedent: While the dinner has traditionally featured comedians since the mid-20th century, the association has previously removed them, such as in 2019 following the controversy over comedian Michelle Wolf’s 2018 performance.

Alternative Entertainment: Instead of a comedy roast, mentalist Oz Pearlman was chosen to “peek into the minds” of Washington newsmakers.

So, I asked ChatGPT to write a few jokes to roast Donald Trump and his administration. Here they are:

“He keeps saying everything is ‘the best ever.’ At this point, even his Wi-Fi password is probably ‘BestPasswordEver123.’”

“Trump loves making deals. The only deal he won’t make? A deal with a fact-checker.”

“He said he’d drain the swamp, but somehow it turned into a resort with membership fees.”

“Trump doesn’t age like a normal president—he ages like a headline: loud, confusing, and somehow still trending.”

“He always talks about winning. At this point, even his autocorrect changes ‘winning’ to ‘tweeting.’”

“They say history repeats itself. With Trump, it just gets reposted—with more caps lock.”

“Trump’s idea of a briefing is just reading his own tweets out loud and nodding along.”

“He promised to run the country like a business. To be fair, there have been a lot of reorganizations.”

“Trump says he’s very busy lately—mostly reposting things he insists he’s never seen before.”

“He keeps calling everything ‘fake news,’ which is impressive, because at this point even his own past statements are like, ‘yeah… that tracks.’”

Who knew ChatGPT could be so funny!