A well-felt little tackle. On the occasion of the traditional annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Joe Biden took the opportunity to make a joke about his rival Donald Trump in his speech. “The 2024 election is in full swing and yes, age is a topic,” he said before launching : “I’m an adult running against a six-year-old.” Between self-deprecation and teasing towards the media, Biden, 81, assured that between him and his 77-year-old Republican rival, “Age is the only thing we have in common.” Bursts of laughter in the room, while around a hundred demonstrators denounced the war in Gaza in front of the entrance to the Hilton hotel, the venue of the event.
The annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which has several thousand guests including journalists and celebrities, has a long-standing tradition of counting the American leader among its participants. He listens to a comedian tearing him down in front of an audience in a tuxedo and long dresses, then delivers a speech peppered with more or less successful jokes. The custom was interrupted during the mandate of Donald Trump.
On the move this year to laugh at the American president, comedian Colin Jost, author and actor for the flagship American television show Saturday Night Live, broadcast on NBC. On the program, mockery of Joe Biden’s age or his occasional falls down the stairs of the presidential plane. “I would like to point out that it is after 10 p.m., Sleepy Joe is still up, while Donald Trump has spent the week falling asleep in court every morning,” asserted the comedian, alluding to the trial in New York of the former president for a case of hidden payments to a former porn actress.
A hundred demonstrators
Colin Jost and Joe Biden adopted a more serious tone to address the question of the political climate in the United States, with Biden believing that Donald Trump’s rhetoric constitutes a danger particularly after the assault on the Capitol in 2021. On the other hand, the question of the war in Gaza has been swept under the carpet. However, around a hundred demonstrators gathered near the entrance to the venue, some protesters chanting “Shame on you” to denounce the conflict. For months now, every time the American president travels, demonstrators gather to protest against the support for Israel of the one they call “Joe the genocidal”, and to demand an end to hostilities in Gaza.
The gala dinner was held at a time when the protest movement against the war in Gaza is becoming widespread on American campuses, with hundreds of arrests and the deployment of riot police. One of the groups that organized the demonstration in front of the Hilton hotel, Code Pink, said it wanted to protest against “the Biden administration’s complicity in the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli army”, specifying that this action would be “nonviolent”.
Around twenty Palestinian journalists had also called in an open letter on their American colleagues to boycott this very popular event, the culmination of an entire weekend of social receptions: “You have a special responsibility to speak the truth to the powerful and uphold journalistic integrity. It is unacceptable to remain silent, out of fear or for career reasons, when journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing their job.”