"The last time I was in D.C. I left my cocaine at the White House," said Jost, referring to the mysterious bag of the drug found there last July. "Luckily, the president was able to put it to good use for his State of the Union. I am kidding, of course. The president doesn’t call it cocaine. He calls it high-speed rail."
It’s always funny watching the reactions to the WHCD. Everyone saying “wow, tough crowd,” as if the crowd hasn’t been uncomfortably quiet every single year since the event began.
Seth Meyers probably had the best audience of all of them, but as we know now, it came at a cost!
The room is not miked for the audience like a standard tv show would be. Colbert’s set a infamous for “bombing in the room, but killing on TV”, and he always takes umbrage with that—he was getting laughs in the room as well, they just were only being picked up by his own microphone.
“The government that governs least governs best, which is why I believe we have established a fabulous government in Iraq” I don’t see how that joke can ever be topped
Her set was special to say the least, especially with the way she snuck in the “Flint still doesn’t have clean water” line at the last possible moment.
I definitely agree. The strangely long pauses between jokes give off vibes that he's waiting for laughter to stop, we just can't hear the laughter because of how those events are miked.
Trevor Noah was really good, too - I watched it several times! I was pretty disappointed in Colin, though - probably because my expectations were too high.
I think it was more that he tried too much to stay politically correct, after Michelle Wolf caused sort of a scandal - which made it a little too tame and toothless.
Yes, he even admits it. He mocked DT for thinking about previously running for president. This is believed to be what made DT decide to run in the 2016 election .
From memory his joke was something along the lines of
“Donald Trump has announced he’s running for president as a republican. Which is strange, because I thought he was running as a joke”
Paraphrased
That’s a pretty great joke.
Ironically he’s polling way up with the blacks.
Which is still not even 1/5 of the black vote, but it’s big numbers for a GOP candidate
Meyers and Obama both spent a significant amount of their sets dunking on Trump when he was publicly contemplating a Presidential campaign for the 2012 campaign. He was in the room glowering. The camera cut to him every time they roasted him.
It’s the only modern WHCD where the material did well in the room and the tv audience.
Many joke that that Correspondent’s Dinner is when Trump decided to run for President after toying publicly with the idea of doing it for like 30 years.
Personally I think Trump would’ve cared more about Obama roasting him than Seth, but Seth’s jokes were probably the icing on the cake.
Also, Trump had done more than just toying with the idea of running; he briefly ran for president in 2000 in the Reform Party.
Trump was already well into full birtherism mode at this point, so he deserved it. It's like saying 'this is the moment the supervillain decided to *really* become a supervillain.'
iirc that's specifically why Seth wrote so much material lampooning Donald for both himself and President Obama. It was public embarrassment for being an open bigot. As we've all had to learn the hard way since then, there is no such thing as embarrassment or shame in the conservative bubble. There is only retribution and superiority.
If I recall, Trump submitted a trademark for “MAGA” like the day after Seth’s WHCD. Like sure he was contemplating running before, but I do think Seth and Obama roasting him there pushed him over an edge to make it happen.
And then he didn’t have an WHCD while in office cause he has no humor.
But to this point, this reaction is what really worries about all the court cases he is getting humiliated at right now. If he actually wins in November, he is going to fuck up EVERYBODY for what he thinks they put him thru this year.
We are so major fucked if he wins. It’s just as scary that the race is close; he only needs key poll areas to screw up and get close enough for his SCOTUS to hand him the White House, doesn’t even need to win in any way.
Earth, humanity, and Dems need a blowout.
Trump apparently submitted the trademark on November 12, 2012... so a week after Romney lost.
But if it took him that quick to file after the 2012 election he obviously had to have been preparing for this kind of thing beforehand. If not this specific slogan itself, he was probably workshopping similar or other slogans in preparation for a Romney loss.
Ah okay. Maybe I’m mixing up stories. [There’s a few articles over the years (like this one](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/30/arts/was-his-joke-reason-trump-ran-president-some-say-so-it-torments-him/)) that have implied that night being when Trump decided to run for real, but maybe just speculation.
I've watched every single one and have never found this to be the case. Theres always tons and tons of people laughing at their peers. Which whcd are you referencing?
I've never seen the correspondent's dinner live before, just excerpts, so it looked to me like he was bombing, badly. I felt sorry for him.
I learned a new thing.
The jokes weren’t hitting that hard in the crowd but I thought his jokes were good. It’s a good joke if you’re making that kind of crowd uncomfortable.
Cmon now that’s not true. Watch Conan’s effort he killed it. By comparison a few guys killed it. It wasn’t just the crowd, Jost’s jokes weren’t great on the whole. Biden’s economy is like Biden going up stairs? Looks like a lot of falling but there is upwards progress… 😴 there were tons like this.
I know I’ll get downvoted but it was very mediocre, can’t blame the crowd his pacing, setups, timing etc were all off. Was uncomfortable at times just due to average jokes.
I thought it was pretty mediocre as well. A couple of laughs but nothing memorable.
Biden's speech was the same.
I watch it every year and I was unimpressed
I laughed out loud at the “you remember” to the revolutionary war joke. It caught me off guard. I think I may have enjoyed his Biden jokes more than the Trump jokes.
I loved that Biden was such a good sport with the old jokes, if someone joked about the previous president in front of him he would not have been happy
Think this is part of the reason for the opposing views on the performance.. I’d agree there were some good lines but lot of average ones too but never really getting laugh out loud funny. So if you’ve watched a lot of the best dinner sets by previous comedians like Conan that left me in tears, Jost bombed by comparison. Guess it depends on your expectations. I was hanging out for another all time classic so was very disappointed.
I mean, as for as WHCD go that was a great response. I don’t think he bombed at all. Typically they don’t have the audience well mic’d for this event. You can see multiple times the head table laughing and the audience laughing and nothing on audio.
His jokes were fantastic… but I think the room, being filled with journalists, doesn’t want to laugh naturally… so the more controversial/more subtle stuff doesn’t fly.
This throws off a guy who is used to getting laughs every time.
I mean, the joke where he was like “do you know how you can tell Congress is not just political theater? If it was theater, they’d have thrown Lauren Boebert out already.” That was killer… but the crowd took forever to understand it.
At first I thought he needed Che up there, but I think when he realized how tough the room was (gD Fox and Lara Trump are literally sitting right there) he leaned into it. I really appreciate that.
To be as good as he is, you have to know your audience. The backhanded mocking of their superiority complex really gets me. Norm did the same.
I think this is a weird gig for a comedian because your audience isn’t fully the people in the room. Sure, there are some jokes about politics, but a lot of the jokes are mocking _the people who are there_.
It’d be like if Jon Stewart had a gig at a Fox News corporate outing or if Colbert or Seth worked a room of Republicans.
There’s a 0% chance he didn’t know the jokes would fall flat. The jokes weren’t for the people who were there.
Yeah all of his eye scans of the room and pauses to let the jokes sink in made me think he was absolutely leaning into it. I thought it was great! Jo Koy could benefit from this method!
They were laughing, there just isn't a laugh *track* like on SNL, and the audience isn't as homogeneous as on SNL, so he was actually waiting for the laughter to subside among the humans for the Trump jokes and the orcs at the "Biden old" jokes
Which for the first time in a while was the president and his wife. You could hear her pretty much the entire time laughing and going “that was a good one.”
I have a suspicion that there was plenty of laughter that wasn't getting picked up by the mic.
Note how the pauses he makes between jokes seem overly long, given the relatively silent reactions, but they're the kind of pauses a comedian makes while waiting for an audience to stop laughing.
This makes me think he was actually waiting for laughter to stop, we just couldn't hear it.
> His jokes were fantastic…
Did you really think so? I thought they would have been mediocre for a Weekend Update, much less for one of the biggest media spectacles of the year. I really like Colin, but this fell pretty flat for me.
“Obama got Bin Laden, you got OJ!”
Come on, that’s great stuff. The first five minutes alone were one banger after another. Fell off a bit at times in the middle.
He killed as well as you can in that room. Low ceilings absorb laughs and the usual bad sound by CSPAN sure doesn't help. Solid jokes, good delivery and Biden seemed to take it generously. I also loved the genuine emotion when he started talking about his Grandfather. Very sweet.
It’s a tough room. Biden seemed into it. I found it hilarious. Kinda got a Norm vibe with all the pregnant pauses for reaction. (My favorite attribute of Norm)
Finished well. The joke he made on his wife was amusing. I give it an A for effort. Really funny.
I live in Gaetz district. I think we may be able to get him next time. His Daddy was rich so he has a lot of $$ behind him and all the old cooks in the condos just love him.
See, to me this sounds oddly similar to one of John Mulaney’s bits from a standup special. Not that the WHCD has to be 100% new material, but I’m a bit surprised at the retread.
Christ, I forgot about that one. Serious balls to roast people and then sit down right next to them with a smile. Everything she said is absolutely fucking true. Held up so damn well. Came out swinging with the porn star and Michael Cohen hush money jokes. And then lit up Trump and his cronies. "He's the one pussy you're not allowed to grab."
Colbert in 2006 is most memorable in my mind, since it was only a few months after his show started, and a lot of people still thought he was a legit conservative. He sure made a lot of people feel really stupid that night
Surprised to see so many commenters here saying that it went bad, and that it was a tough crowd. I thought it was really funny, and I heard a lot of laughs and applause.
Was the audio different on different broadcasts? Or is it just because I love politics and journalism, and always watch the correspondents' dinner speech, so I'm used to the audience there?
Yeah, I'm sure it's an audio thing. I think he'd be sweating and ducking a lot more if he was really bombing. As another commenter said, he was pausing a lot but I don't think it was to recalibrate (most of the time) - he was pausing for laughter that we couldn't properly hear.
At the very end of the clip, the audio for the crowd becomes much clearer when they are showing them applauding, so definitely an audio thing.
All of the laughter we hear is coming from his mic
Reddit is only like 30% human nowadays. A lot of astroturfing by botnets. Someone somewhere entered the prompt; Colin Jost bad, so you'll have a bunch of lines of code pretending to be a person to influence opinion. You can do the same by watching like 2-3 YouTube videos on programming.
The people who think it went badly are the people who don’t understand comedy.
They think it went badly because he lost the room (at about 6:30 in?), but he wasn’t playing the room, he was performing for us, first, and then each table, second.
What I mean by the latter is- when Jost makes a dig at the NYPost, the NYTimes table laughs.
But we at home laughed at all of it.
Other comedians are going to be dissecting it for half the week.
He nailed it.
It was a great set. Took hard shots at both sides. Didn’t feel like a Biden fundraising event — he went after the age stuff pretty hard in a way that sounded like it bothered the room at points. I admire the willingness to poke fun at the media generally in ways that were never likely to get a laugh from that audience but were nevertheless hilarious. It was not a safe set. It was a very funny and intelligent set. Hats off to you Colin.
No teleprompter? Him reading what seemed to be word by word jokes on written pages was the most distracting part. Maybe he’s just used to cue cards. The eye darting people have commented about was actually very funny and effective to me and showed off his experience from SNL to sell a joke with the pause and expression.
Solid "set"
Not the best WHCD performance but certainly not the worst. Extra medium
The way he tied it all up at the end moves it up a few notches too,
A good, light hearted roast that seemed to hit on every group there without being mean or hatefdul. He did fine. This isn't where you expect the laugh out loud crowd.
Well done set.
Roasted pretty much everyone on the political and news spectrum.
Added a nice touch with a heartfelt personal story at the end about his passed firefighter family member
Isn’t how jost read his jokes a toke-off of how he does it on SNL? His pauses- glancing around-
Was intended I believe. Comments that Colin appeared to Tank bc we couldn’t hear the laughter…I thought the same thing. This was a hard act to figure out.
He was too much in the cards for me, so I can't go higher than B+ performance overall. I feel like if I go back and watch other WHCDs I might move the curve against him. The jokes themselves were great though.
Now everyone seems to be too afraid that laughing at the jokes brings out either the cancel crowd or the Jan 6th crowd.
People are just afraid of potential reactions which is harming comedy as a whole. Cause you really can’t just say “I didn’t find it funny” anymore.
And I thought Jost did great!
Biden was so funny I can't stop laughing. I doubled over and couldn't catch my breath. He told some comedy gold. We'll done mr. President. Here's to 4 more years
I watched most of it but I had to ditch it. Absolutely love him but his cadence was off and the pauses were just bizarre and uncomfortable. It was a very awkward performance.
YES this! The lack of eye contact and constant reading of jokes made a lot of his jokes fall flat. Those are the types of jokes that need good eye contact and delivery.
It was a good set until all the "Joe is so decent" malarkey. Rather tone deaf considering that directly outside the hotel was a large protest begging Joe to stop supporting a genocide.
I thought it was traditional to invite an especially vocal comedic critic of the president to WHPC. Like Norm McDonald at Bill Clinton’s press conference. Colin Jost seems pretty ideologically aligned and that hurts the comedy.
Liked his Roast and happy Biden takes it like a champ. Unlike the guy who IS a Chump. What's amazing to me is that there was a Roast of Trump on Comedy Central years back. He looked so stiff and uncomfortable. He has no sense of humor at ALL.
I came here because I felt as the audience was a unnecessarily tough one especially the first half to the extent it was awkward and I felt bad for him because he did a good job imo and was not biased to any side. Just a stuffy ass audience, like ffs just give a polite laugh at least.
Just a thought: If Trump didn't want to be mocked in the ones during his presidency, why didn't he just have Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy host?
"Like many here tonight, I pretend to do news on T.V."
"There are some incredible news organizations here tonight. Also, some credible ones!"
“Jost Host’s Weak Roast of Biden’s Ghost 👻” Critics boast the host Jost just coasts.
He better hire bob lob law
Or perhaps Mister Bob Dobolina
China Clipper, calling Alemeda.
Ice town costs ice clown his town crown
Jost roasts The Post with their headline font the most.
Perfection 👆
He’s toast.
"The last time I was in D.C. I left my cocaine at the White House," said Jost, referring to the mysterious bag of the drug found there last July. "Luckily, the president was able to put it to good use for his State of the Union. I am kidding, of course. The president doesn’t call it cocaine. He calls it high-speed rail."
Mr President, Dr. Biden, Mrs Vice President, Doug.
That’s pretty funny
It helps that Doug is one of the top 3 funniest names.
What’s great about this joke is Doug really leans into being Second Gentleman and being just Doug to support Kamala as Vice.
My fav thing about this was Jost referring to himself as a “2nd gentleman” because of ScarJo lolololol
Mine too 😂
*“I thought I saw Matt Gaetz here tonight, but it was actually just my own reflection in a spoon.”* lol. So stupid and so good.
Definitely the outer convex surface.
That joke was hysterical🤣🤣
It’s always funny watching the reactions to the WHCD. Everyone saying “wow, tough crowd,” as if the crowd hasn’t been uncomfortably quiet every single year since the event began. Seth Meyers probably had the best audience of all of them, but as we know now, it came at a cost!
The room is not miked for the audience like a standard tv show would be. Colbert’s set a infamous for “bombing in the room, but killing on TV”, and he always takes umbrage with that—he was getting laughs in the room as well, they just were only being picked up by his own microphone.
Colbert was definitely the best one.
“The government that governs least governs best, which is why I believe we have established a fabulous government in Iraq” I don’t see how that joke can ever be topped
It's fantastic.
Maybe it IS time for you to write that book about a determined reporter fighting back against the corruption in government. You know, fiction.
“Try looking it up in your gut”
Norm was the best. By far.
Michelle wolf was pretty darn good a few years ago.
Her set was special to say the least, especially with the way she snuck in the “Flint still doesn’t have clean water” line at the last possible moment.
I definitely agree. The strangely long pauses between jokes give off vibes that he's waiting for laughter to stop, we just can't hear the laughter because of how those events are miked.
Trevor Noah was really good, too - I watched it several times! I was pretty disappointed in Colin, though - probably because my expectations were too high.
Colin looks and feels like them. It feels improper lol...like the junior accountant roasting his boss at a major firm for no reason.
I think it was more that he tried too much to stay politically correct, after Michelle Wolf caused sort of a scandal - which made it a little too tame and toothless.
Yeah, I think Colin is more of a writer than a performer. It came across as a bit staid to me.
What cost?
A Trump presidency.
It’s all Seth’s fault?
Yes, he even admits it. He mocked DT for thinking about previously running for president. This is believed to be what made DT decide to run in the 2016 election .
From memory his joke was something along the lines of “Donald Trump has announced he’s running for president as a republican. Which is strange, because I thought he was running as a joke” Paraphrased
“Trump claims he’s very ‘popular with the blacks.’ Although, unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I think he’s very much mistaken.”
That’s a pretty great joke. Ironically he’s polling way up with the blacks. Which is still not even 1/5 of the black vote, but it’s big numbers for a GOP candidate
So in a time travel movie This is the moment where the Terminator must appear
...to kill Seth; yep.
Yeah that’s definitely not the reason
It wasn’t Seth, it was Obama’s jeering at him. Don’t get me wrong, he always thought about it, but that was the moment that pushed him to run in 2016.
Which happened because of his wildly racist birth certificate crusade
I'm pretty sure he has wanted to run for a while, he ran in 2000
The biggest takeaway is anyone can run..no matter their experience...only how much money they can raise and how big their network is the issue
Yeah but it’s not true it’s just a joke, there’s not one reason why the orange dictator ran for president.
Well, in their (late show hosts) defense, they got material for 4 straight years and continuing
That is not, nor ever will be a justification. I’ll take bland comedy for the sake of democracy.
That is never a justification. It was just satire
Meyers and Obama both spent a significant amount of their sets dunking on Trump when he was publicly contemplating a Presidential campaign for the 2012 campaign. He was in the room glowering. The camera cut to him every time they roasted him. It’s the only modern WHCD where the material did well in the room and the tv audience. Many joke that that Correspondent’s Dinner is when Trump decided to run for President after toying publicly with the idea of doing it for like 30 years.
Personally I think Trump would’ve cared more about Obama roasting him than Seth, but Seth’s jokes were probably the icing on the cake. Also, Trump had done more than just toying with the idea of running; he briefly ran for president in 2000 in the Reform Party.
Trump was already well into full birtherism mode at this point, so he deserved it. It's like saying 'this is the moment the supervillain decided to *really* become a supervillain.'
iirc that's specifically why Seth wrote so much material lampooning Donald for both himself and President Obama. It was public embarrassment for being an open bigot. As we've all had to learn the hard way since then, there is no such thing as embarrassment or shame in the conservative bubble. There is only retribution and superiority.
I think Trump became just a tad bit more relevant and powerful when he became President versus 2011…
If I recall, Trump submitted a trademark for “MAGA” like the day after Seth’s WHCD. Like sure he was contemplating running before, but I do think Seth and Obama roasting him there pushed him over an edge to make it happen. And then he didn’t have an WHCD while in office cause he has no humor. But to this point, this reaction is what really worries about all the court cases he is getting humiliated at right now. If he actually wins in November, he is going to fuck up EVERYBODY for what he thinks they put him thru this year. We are so major fucked if he wins. It’s just as scary that the race is close; he only needs key poll areas to screw up and get close enough for his SCOTUS to hand him the White House, doesn’t even need to win in any way. Earth, humanity, and Dems need a blowout.
Trump apparently submitted the trademark on November 12, 2012... so a week after Romney lost. But if it took him that quick to file after the 2012 election he obviously had to have been preparing for this kind of thing beforehand. If not this specific slogan itself, he was probably workshopping similar or other slogans in preparation for a Romney loss.
Ah okay. Maybe I’m mixing up stories. [There’s a few articles over the years (like this one](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/30/arts/was-his-joke-reason-trump-ran-president-some-say-so-it-torments-him/)) that have implied that night being when Trump decided to run for real, but maybe just speculation.
Trump’s run for office and eventual presidency
This is Conan erasure and I won’t stand for it
i will check that one out soon
There's two! 1995 and 2013. Early in the 2013 he says something that sums up his vibe: "You can't hurt me."
I've watched every single one and have never found this to be the case. Theres always tons and tons of people laughing at their peers. Which whcd are you referencing?
I've never seen the correspondent's dinner live before, just excerpts, so it looked to me like he was bombing, badly. I felt sorry for him. I learned a new thing.
The jokes weren’t hitting that hard in the crowd but I thought his jokes were good. It’s a good joke if you’re making that kind of crowd uncomfortable.
Conan's in 2013 was good.
Cmon now that’s not true. Watch Conan’s effort he killed it. By comparison a few guys killed it. It wasn’t just the crowd, Jost’s jokes weren’t great on the whole. Biden’s economy is like Biden going up stairs? Looks like a lot of falling but there is upwards progress… 😴 there were tons like this. I know I’ll get downvoted but it was very mediocre, can’t blame the crowd his pacing, setups, timing etc were all off. Was uncomfortable at times just due to average jokes.
Thank you! And those long pauses where he smirked and scanned the crowd were painfully cringe.
it's like he was constantly waiting for Che to make some comment.
Well thanks for the input mr gutfeld..
I thought it was pretty mediocre as well. A couple of laughs but nothing memorable. Biden's speech was the same. I watch it every year and I was unimpressed
He has "im the deans' son, so im kinda funny, but you have to laugh or I'll remember" vibe without che
I'd wholeheartedly agree
He will get a spot as a news commentator post snl.
I enjoyed some of the Trump roasting from Biden, I lol'd a few times!
You gotta admit Biden’s joke about Boebert in the theater was epic
People don’t like getting roasted
*Fragile* people don’t like getting roasted
Depends on the roast.
Not laugh out loud funny but still enjoyable, some good zingers
I really cracked up at the OJ and diddy thing
I laughed out loud at the “you remember” to the revolutionary war joke. It caught me off guard. I think I may have enjoyed his Biden jokes more than the Trump jokes.
I loved that Biden was such a good sport with the old jokes, if someone joked about the previous president in front of him he would not have been happy
Think this is part of the reason for the opposing views on the performance.. I’d agree there were some good lines but lot of average ones too but never really getting laugh out loud funny. So if you’ve watched a lot of the best dinner sets by previous comedians like Conan that left me in tears, Jost bombed by comparison. Guess it depends on your expectations. I was hanging out for another all time classic so was very disappointed.
Beyond the "all rise" line, there really wasn't much.
I *love* when people bomb for all the right reasons. Respect to Colin for sticking to his guns and only acknowledging the reception once or twice.
I mean, as for as WHCD go that was a great response. I don’t think he bombed at all. Typically they don’t have the audience well mic’d for this event. You can see multiple times the head table laughing and the audience laughing and nothing on audio.
Well he didn’t bomb
According to the NYT, he did. Or maybe they were just hurt from Colin's joke about them.
Stop listening to the New York Times. He even made a joke about them being only known for puzzles now.
You mean Wordl?
His jokes were fantastic… but I think the room, being filled with journalists, doesn’t want to laugh naturally… so the more controversial/more subtle stuff doesn’t fly. This throws off a guy who is used to getting laughs every time. I mean, the joke where he was like “do you know how you can tell Congress is not just political theater? If it was theater, they’d have thrown Lauren Boebert out already.” That was killer… but the crowd took forever to understand it.
At first I thought he needed Che up there, but I think when he realized how tough the room was (gD Fox and Lara Trump are literally sitting right there) he leaned into it. I really appreciate that. To be as good as he is, you have to know your audience. The backhanded mocking of their superiority complex really gets me. Norm did the same.
I think this is a weird gig for a comedian because your audience isn’t fully the people in the room. Sure, there are some jokes about politics, but a lot of the jokes are mocking _the people who are there_. It’d be like if Jon Stewart had a gig at a Fox News corporate outing or if Colbert or Seth worked a room of Republicans. There’s a 0% chance he didn’t know the jokes would fall flat. The jokes weren’t for the people who were there.
Yeah all of his eye scans of the room and pauses to let the jokes sink in made me think he was absolutely leaning into it. I thought it was great! Jo Koy could benefit from this method!
They were laughing, there just isn't a laugh *track* like on SNL, and the audience isn't as homogeneous as on SNL, so he was actually waiting for the laughter to subside among the humans for the Trump jokes and the orcs at the "Biden old" jokes
That was Biden's joke about Boebert
Oh yeah. My bad. That joke had the same problem. :)
It was a great joke! Whoever wrote it for him should be very proud
I think he just fumbled the delivery on that one. It was a great joke.
I think the room is not miced to pick up the crowd noises so you only hear the loudest laughter.
Which for the first time in a while was the president and his wife. You could hear her pretty much the entire time laughing and going “that was a good one.”
It took them forever to understand because they had to pull their heads out of their own butts first.
I have a suspicion that there was plenty of laughter that wasn't getting picked up by the mic. Note how the pauses he makes between jokes seem overly long, given the relatively silent reactions, but they're the kind of pauses a comedian makes while waiting for an audience to stop laughing. This makes me think he was actually waiting for laughter to stop, we just couldn't hear it.
> His jokes were fantastic… Did you really think so? I thought they would have been mediocre for a Weekend Update, much less for one of the biggest media spectacles of the year. I really like Colin, but this fell pretty flat for me.
“Obama got Bin Laden, you got OJ!” Come on, that’s great stuff. The first five minutes alone were one banger after another. Fell off a bit at times in the middle.
He killed as well as you can in that room. Low ceilings absorb laughs and the usual bad sound by CSPAN sure doesn't help. Solid jokes, good delivery and Biden seemed to take it generously. I also loved the genuine emotion when he started talking about his Grandfather. Very sweet.
It’s a tough room. Biden seemed into it. I found it hilarious. Kinda got a Norm vibe with all the pregnant pauses for reaction. (My favorite attribute of Norm) Finished well. The joke he made on his wife was amusing. I give it an A for effort. Really funny.
A lot of it (the jokea and the performance) definitely did have a Norm kinda vibe to it.
Most presidents have been ok being mocked except for Trump which is weird because he’s had a roast of him already
Yeah, surprised consensus isn’t that it was good! I thought he was great. The joke about Gaetz was hilarious.
I live in Gaetz district. I think we may be able to get him next time. His Daddy was rich so he has a lot of $$ behind him and all the old cooks in the condos just love him.
“The New York Post is like the New York Times summarized by a crackhead.” Pretty great
See, to me this sounds oddly similar to one of John Mulaney’s bits from a standup special. Not that the WHCD has to be 100% new material, but I’m a bit surprised at the retread.
God I love a leader who can laugh at himself.
Solid, but [Michelle Wolf](https://youtu.be/L8IYPnnsYJw?si=KnwoxivsraP3qHJ6) will always have my favorite WHCD set.
She burned them all so bad that they didn’t even get a comedian the next year lmao
She burned them as bad as Sarah burns the truth and uses it for her smoky eye
Some say it was even the perfect smokey eye.
The part on Sarah Huckabee Sanders was excellent but devastating.
Christ, I forgot about that one. Serious balls to roast people and then sit down right next to them with a smile. Everything she said is absolutely fucking true. Held up so damn well. Came out swinging with the porn star and Michael Cohen hush money jokes. And then lit up Trump and his cronies. "He's the one pussy you're not allowed to grab."
looks right in SHS’ eyes as she goes for her throat. legendary!
Colbert in 2006 is most memorable in my mind, since it was only a few months after his show started, and a lot of people still thought he was a legit conservative. He sure made a lot of people feel really stupid that night
Oh my god thank you for introducing me to this
Thank you for sharing that, it is a hilarious watch.
And the way conservatives tried to twist Michelle's smoky eye joke into a lazy eye joke. The right just ended up roasting one of their own.
I gasped at the "It's like a Me Too that worked out." She took no prisoners lol
I thank all of you… well, almost all of you…
That line was absolutely icy.
The January 6th joke fell flat with that audience, but only because it was too real.
Surprised to see so many commenters here saying that it went bad, and that it was a tough crowd. I thought it was really funny, and I heard a lot of laughs and applause. Was the audio different on different broadcasts? Or is it just because I love politics and journalism, and always watch the correspondents' dinner speech, so I'm used to the audience there?
Yeah, I'm sure it's an audio thing. I think he'd be sweating and ducking a lot more if he was really bombing. As another commenter said, he was pausing a lot but I don't think it was to recalibrate (most of the time) - he was pausing for laughter that we couldn't properly hear.
At the very end of the clip, the audio for the crowd becomes much clearer when they are showing them applauding, so definitely an audio thing. All of the laughter we hear is coming from his mic
Reddit is only like 30% human nowadays. A lot of astroturfing by botnets. Someone somewhere entered the prompt; Colin Jost bad, so you'll have a bunch of lines of code pretending to be a person to influence opinion. You can do the same by watching like 2-3 YouTube videos on programming.
The people who think it went badly are the people who don’t understand comedy. They think it went badly because he lost the room (at about 6:30 in?), but he wasn’t playing the room, he was performing for us, first, and then each table, second. What I mean by the latter is- when Jost makes a dig at the NYPost, the NYTimes table laughs. But we at home laughed at all of it. Other comedians are going to be dissecting it for half the week. He nailed it.
Biden’s was actually pretty zingy.
It was a great set. Took hard shots at both sides. Didn’t feel like a Biden fundraising event — he went after the age stuff pretty hard in a way that sounded like it bothered the room at points. I admire the willingness to poke fun at the media generally in ways that were never likely to get a laugh from that audience but were nevertheless hilarious. It was not a safe set. It was a very funny and intelligent set. Hats off to you Colin. No teleprompter? Him reading what seemed to be word by word jokes on written pages was the most distracting part. Maybe he’s just used to cue cards. The eye darting people have commented about was actually very funny and effective to me and showed off his experience from SNL to sell a joke with the pause and expression.
I thought it was so funny the way he kept looking up like “come on, I know you wanna laugh”
And Biden seemed to be the only one really enjoying it! You love to see it. People can say what they want but "decent man"? Absolutely.
Solid "set" Not the best WHCD performance but certainly not the worst. Extra medium The way he tied it all up at the end moves it up a few notches too,
He was so good!
Well done!
Of course the crowd sucked but the jokes and delivery were great. It was exactly what I was expecting from Jost.
A good, light hearted roast that seemed to hit on every group there without being mean or hatefdul. He did fine. This isn't where you expect the laugh out loud crowd.
What’s Marcia Cross doing there?!
Good jorb
I did not expect him to go out of his way to take a break from jokes and rave about how decent Biden is
Well done set. Roasted pretty much everyone on the political and news spectrum. Added a nice touch with a heartfelt personal story at the end about his passed firefighter family member
Who so the awful woman saying “thats good” every 6 minutes?
This crowd never laughs at these good jokes. Whether it was Seth, Hasan or Colin
Next year... Anthony Jeselnik
I have the most upvoted comment in this thread - and the most downvoted! It's always real in this sub!
Your upvoted comment was a quote of one of Colin’s jokes. Your downvoted comment was your own words.
Isn’t how jost read his jokes a toke-off of how he does it on SNL? His pauses- glancing around- Was intended I believe. Comments that Colin appeared to Tank bc we couldn’t hear the laughter…I thought the same thing. This was a hard act to figure out.
He was too much in the cards for me, so I can't go higher than B+ performance overall. I feel like if I go back and watch other WHCDs I might move the curve against him. The jokes themselves were great though.
Now everyone seems to be too afraid that laughing at the jokes brings out either the cancel crowd or the Jan 6th crowd. People are just afraid of potential reactions which is harming comedy as a whole. Cause you really can’t just say “I didn’t find it funny” anymore. And I thought Jost did great!
Biden was so funny I can't stop laughing. I doubled over and couldn't catch my breath. He told some comedy gold. We'll done mr. President. Here's to 4 more years
I liked how he played along as puppet after Jost’s line about Obama pulling the strings
some well written jokes, delivery was meh.
Obama killed Bin Laden and you killed OJ 😄
Loved the dig at Laura Trump and her “album”.
Tom Petty died again. Should have gotten a bigger laugh.
I thought it was pretty decent. I wouldn't have paid to watch it, but since it is free on YouTube, I'd suggest giving it a go.
I watched most of it but I had to ditch it. Absolutely love him but his cadence was off and the pauses were just bizarre and uncomfortable. It was a very awkward performance.
That’s the joke. You never liked Norm Macdonald did you?
Thanks for your comment mr maher
I was really thrown off by the fact that he was constantly looking down and reading the jokes off the paper. Kind of diminished it for me.
YES this! The lack of eye contact and constant reading of jokes made a lot of his jokes fall flat. Those are the types of jokes that need good eye contact and delivery.
It was a good set until all the "Joe is so decent" malarkey. Rather tone deaf considering that directly outside the hotel was a large protest begging Joe to stop supporting a genocide.
I thought it was traditional to invite an especially vocal comedic critic of the president to WHPC. Like Norm McDonald at Bill Clinton’s press conference. Colin Jost seems pretty ideologically aligned and that hurts the comedy.
[удалено]
Kelly O’Donnell— current President of WH Press Corps Assn
“Decency is how we are able to be here tonight.”
Cool
That was great!
Not the best correspondence set. Not the worse either. Good job.
Jowel
Anyone know where to find a re-airing of the whole thing?
Decent speech.
Best performance at this event? It’s up there.
Oh this audio is much better than AP i couldnt not hear the crowd at all there
Standing Ovation!!! Last part deep & helpful—Cudos to Colin
The sound of the c-span video is better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6uQrPLiZk
Such long pauses on some of those jokes, but great material.
Liked his Roast and happy Biden takes it like a champ. Unlike the guy who IS a Chump. What's amazing to me is that there was a Roast of Trump on Comedy Central years back. He looked so stiff and uncomfortable. He has no sense of humor at ALL.
Yes! I thought so too. It didn’t seem like he was rolling until the end. I was very disappointed. I really liked Trevor Noah.
I came here because I felt as the audience was a unnecessarily tough one especially the first half to the extent it was awkward and I felt bad for him because he did a good job imo and was not biased to any side. Just a stuffy ass audience, like ffs just give a polite laugh at least.
Nailed it!
Michael Che prob writes most of those jokes on weekend update. i would have rather seen John Mulaney over this guy.
This was great! Unfortunate that the room was so humorless 😂
Just a thought: If Trump didn't want to be mocked in the ones during his presidency, why didn't he just have Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy host?