Here Are Obama’s Best Jokes From the Sizzling White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Obama roasts Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and ponders being a “couch commander.”


 

At his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, President Barack Obama walked onstage to Anna Kendrick’s song “You’re Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone,” and smirked as he told the audience, “You know it’s true.”

He mused about what he’ll do once he becomes “couch commander” after his presidency and received both boos and applause when he hinted at who may take the stage as president at next year’s Correspondents’ Dinner. “It’s anyone’s guess who she will be,” he said.

See the video below. Obama’s remarks start at 2:35:00.

The president complimented Bernie Sanders’ “Feel the Bern” movement, and he teased Hillary Clinton’s struggle to attract young voters. He compared her tactics to a “relative who just signed up for Facebook.”

Republicans got the worst of the roast, of course. Obama couldn’t resist poking fun at Ted Cruz’s “basketball ring” mishap in Indiana, and he dismissed candidates who “didn’t poll high enough to earn a joke.”

Toward the end of the speech, Obama faked out the audience by wrapping things up without talking about Donald Trump. But later he took swings at the GOP front-runner’s previous ties with Miss Universe, and he said Trump may have an advantage in closing Guantanamo Bay because of Trump’s experience “running waterfront properties into the ground.”

Obama left the stage with two words: “Obama out.” Then he appropriately dropped the mic.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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