President Trump, will you be watching Samantha Bee’s alt-White House correspondents’ dinner?
Samantha Bee
Over President Donald Trump's first 100 days, we're asking him questions that our audience wants answers to. Join the project by tweeting this question to @realDonaldTrump with the hashtag #100Days100Qs.
#97. @realDonaldTrump, will you be watching Samantha Bee’s alt-White House correspondents’ dinner? #100Days100Qs
The White House correspondents' dinner — aka Nerd Prom, aka the chummy roast of Washington attended by beltway press and powerful politicos, Hollywood elites and most sitting US presidents — is a century-old tradition. Donald Trump has attended quite a few of them. He was famously even the subject of the roasting back when Barack Obama was president.
oembed://https%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dk8TwRmX6zs4%20
But this year — and now that he's President Donald Trump — he's not attending.
Nevertheless, the barbs will fly. In fact, this year they're multiplying. Both the WHCD and the competing "Not the White House Correspondents Dinner" are being hosted this year by alums of The Daily Show. Comedian Hassan Minhaj is hosting the official shindig, and feminist comedic superstar Samantha Bee is running the show over at the edgier #NotTheWHCD.
oembed://https%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dt0UvTubRXks
Bee has a reputation for calling politicians out for sexism and a lack of commitment to the advancement of women around the world, to say the least. So her alt-WHCD is sure to be heavy on women's rights.
Until 1962, the correspondents' dinner was a men-only event. Then White House reporter Helen Thomas urged President John F. Kennedy to boycott the dinner until the ban on women was lifted. He did. For three years in a row. Until the White House Correspondents' Association, which hosts the dinner, bent and made the event open to journalists of any gender.
Now Bee, a news-comedy personality with a bent toward the feminist, is hosting a WHCD dinner of her own. That's pretty cool.
oembed://https%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DgY3P97S4dvg%26feature%3Dyoutu.be
So, President Trump, will you be watching? Click here to tweet that question to the president.