Trump’s speech devolves into list of gripes and nasty attacks on opponents – as it happened

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Donald Trump batted down concerns that the ongoing Iran war – which has seen 13 days of consecutive strikes – could cost Republicans control of Congress in the upcoming midterms.

“Despite what everybody says about the election, I’m not in a hurry,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have to do it right. Elections take care of themselves.”

This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:

Donald Trump delivered an angry, poorly judged and deeply partisan speech of more than an hour to the rescheduled White House correspondents’ association dinner. The president began with some light banter, but later trotted out mockery of Democrats that thrills his fans at rallies but fell entirely flat in the room.

Among the oddest moments of the event was the presentation of awards to journalists for their coverage of the Trump White House as the president sat on stage and initially congratulated the winners. Later in the evening, he scolded two of the winners by name for their work.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has praised an agreement reached on Friday with Warner Bros and Paramount that halts their proposed merging until 1 June 2027, or until a court rules on a challenge to the merger filed by a coalition of 12 attorneys general, whichever comes first.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted on Friday to select South Carolina to lead the party’s 2028 presidential primary calendar. While the Palmetto state will kick off the calendar, five other states will follow with nominating contests ahead of Super Tuesday.

A ⁠federal appeals court declined on Friday to halt a judge’s order that blocks the Trump administration from imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

Donald Trump just, finally, concluded more than an hour of remarks, in a speech which devolved from light, after-dinner banter into a bitter series of complaints and attacks on political rivals and journalists.

Having initially played the good sport, by shaking the hands of White House correspondents who won awards for tough coverage of his administration earlier in the evening, Trump used the later portion of his remarks to single out for attack two reporters whose work irked him: Kaitlan Collins of CNN and Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal.

“I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It’s all about me. It’s a fake. She shouldn’t get the award,” Trump said of the correspondent’s coverage of his ill-tempered confrontation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2025.

“It was a fake, but I didn’t mind,” Trump said, unconvincingly. “I said, Caitlyn, congratulations, but it was fake. There’s no question about it.”

The president then repeated the same sexist attack he has made on Collins previously, telling her that she should smile more when she questions him on subjects like the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.

“But she’s a young, attractive woman. She never smiles,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you have a smile? Smile. You have a nice position. You’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person.’ So smile, Kaitlan, just smile.”

“Then you have writer Josh Dawsey,” Trump said at another point. “He’s been killing me for years … and yet tonight, he shakes my hand. He hugs me. Everything nice. He kills me.”

“He writes more stories than any human being. There’s nobody that writes more than Josh. He’ll write four stories about me a day,” Trump went on. “He’s hit the big time and he’s a workhorse, and yet he’s almost unhireable.”

“He’s almost unhireable,” the president repeated, despite acknowledging that Dawsey, a former Washington Post reporter, had, in fact, been hired by the Wall Street Journal

As he nears the hour mark, Donald Trump’s speech has turned more and more into a rehash of the rally speeches he gives to acclaim from his fondest supporters, with a series of nasty comments about journalists and bitter attacks on political rivals mixed in with complaints about his press coverage.

The room is notably silent as he rambles on and on, mixing lame prepared gags that kill with his fans, but elicit close to no laughter from a room of nonpartisan reporters.

The president almost entirely abandoned the traditional self-deprecating remarks his predecessors have delivered at this event, choosing instead to attack Democrats, boast about what he calls his accomplishments, repeat false claims about investment figures and put on a “Trump 2028” cap.

A typical example of his humor was calling James Talarico, “Tal-a-freako”, a political attack line masquerading as a gag.

While Donald Trump’s speech turned into a long rant, attacking a string of Democrats in the same deeply partisan tone he uses at rallies and in rightwing media appearances, with much of the same material he uses habitually to attack political figures including Gavin “Newscum”, Kamala Harris, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, he was oddly conciliatory to his predecessor Barack Obama, as he recalled being roasted by the then-president at the 2011 White House correspondents’ association dinner.

“I have been here actually quite a few times, people don’t realize, and there’s one time in particular when Barack Hussein Obama hosted it,” Trump said. “Do you know who that is? And he hit me hard, but actually he hit me with respect.”

“I have watched this clip thousands of times,” Trump said. “They keep playing it because they think that was the evening I decided to run for president. It was not. In fact, I loved the evening. I looked at my wife, I said, ‘Can you believe it? All these people, that’s all they’re doing, is talking about me. I love this dinner.’

“It’s true, and Obama was nice. He, you know, it’s amazing how things work out. He actually showed a picture of the White House with a big Trump on top. Like I put a sign and, you know, I’m sort of doing that when you think about it, right? I mean, I think he wasn’t really wrong, but no, he was respectful. He was good.”

The roast, Trump insisted, “had nothing to do” with his decision to run for president five years later.

Trump’s speech includes a few canned jokes, one at the expense of Robert F Kennedy, before turning into a generally quite nasty roast of his political rivals and media figures he dislikes.

“I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire very delicious beef tenderloin, very special beef. And I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy, who’s right here personally, ran over the cow in his car. And he cut it up, and he brought it here for you to eat tonight,” Trump said. “So it’s very fresh. And Bobby also suggested an appetizer featuring his favorite cut of male raccoon roadkill. But we drew the line at that.”

The president then turned to his rivals, with a series of jabs that elicited little laughter, and felt personal.

Among his targets: Chris Christie and Jerry Nadler, who were mocked for being overweight.

“For the heaviest of the heavyweights,” he said, imagining a fight, “we will have sloppy Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest … human beings you’ll ever meet, fighting. I would say I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I’m going to mention instead Jerry Nadler. And they’re fighting for a big piece of cheesecake. Big fat piece of cheesecake,” Trump said.

He then mocked in deeply partisan ways that would go over at Republican events but fell flat here congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for pausing before responding to a question on foreign policy at the Munich Security Conference, and Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator from California who led the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, over his attempt to force Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into opening a sham investigation of Joe Biden.

The president also repeated familiar attacks on Don Lemon, Rosie O’Donnell and Bruce Springsteen.

As he often does, Donald Trump has turned his remarks to the White House correspondents’ association into an excuse to argue for the ballroom he is building on the site of the destroyed East Wing of the White House.

“Everyone is now really warming up the new White House military center, drone port, highly protected ballroom,” Trump said.

“We have our ballroom. The windows are this thick,” Trump said. “I said to the people, ‘Well, if a bullet hits, what happens?’ ‘Nothing. Nothing. It bounces right off. Sir, this is the greatest bulletproof glass.’”

“We’re building something’s going to be amazing, and in light of what we went through, I think, people understand it,” Trump said, suggesting that the attack on the previous dinner could have been prevented by hosting it in his ballroom.

“It’s going to be amazing, a phenomenal– one of the biggest drone ports anywhere in the world, right on the roof,” Trump went on, and on. “Protecting the White House, not only the ballroom and what’s underneath. You know, it’s supposed to be a top military secret, what’s underneath.”

“Very complex stuff. It was the military’s dream to have it built,” Trump added. “I wanted to have a ballroom because for 150 years they wanted it. And then the generals came to see me and they said, ‘Sir, you’re building something. This gives us an opportunity to do something that will be so unbelievable’.”

In his remarks to the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner, Donald Trump began by lightly jabbing at the journalists in the room, saying: “Many of you were there with me and some showed extreme bravery, like Pete Hegseth, Steve Miller, Tom Homan.”

“They were standing on tables, and most of you were under the tables,” the president said.

He moved on to praising the Secret Service officer who confronted the man charged attacking the dinner in April, Cole Allen.

Trump mentioned that he had been “psyched” before the previous dinner to deliver the stinging critique of the correspondents he had prepared, but said he had decided to give a more gentle speech at the rescheduled event. This speech, he said, “is going to be such a letdown”.

His remarks so far have been generally light, after-dinner speaker fare.

“This place is the, really, the largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people ever put together at one time,” the president said.

“Your lives were really in danger the last time,” Trump said. “But on the plus side, your careers were saved.”

Donald Trump just started his remarks to the White House correspondents’ association dinner, which is being live-streamed, by saying that the journalists are “amazing people. A lot of people that I like, some I don’t like at all, but I respect most of them. I must say that you do a great job, amazing job, and it’s an honor.”

He then moved on to bragging about having previously run the hotel the dinner is being held in. He followed with a joke about running for a third term, before adding: “I’m only kidding.”

A series of awards for reporting on the Trump White House have just been handed out to journalists Donald Trump has harangued and threatened for their unflattering portrayals of him and his administration.

At one stage, Trump theatrically shrugged as the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer mentioned that the president had filed a $20bn lawsuit “revealing the reporter Khadeeja Safdar’s home address” after the Wall Street Journal revealed the bawdy birthday letter sent in his name to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.

Trump acted the good sport, shaking hands with all of the award winners, including Kaitlan Collins, the CNN correspondent he once criticized for not smiling as she tried to ask him about Epstein’s victims.

Another award went to the Getty Images photographer Andrew Harnik, for his Oval Office photo of Trump standing impassive as a man who had fainted during an event was cared for by others. The photograph inspired a Saturday Night Live sketch recreating the moment in which the comedian who played Trump, James Austin Johnson, said the president’s response was to “just stand there and stare like a sociopath”.

Across town, the American Civil Liberties Union is holding its own awards ceremony on Friday night at another Washington DC venue.

In what sounds like a dispatch from a parallel universe, while Donald Trump attends a ceremony in support of the press corps he routinely derides, the ACLU ceremony is honoring Bruce Springsteen and Colin Kaepernick, for their “profound contributions to American thought and culture”, and the civil rights lawyers Vanita Gupta, Erwin Chemerinsky and Elizabeth Foster.

Earlier this year, Springsteen allowed the ACLU to use his song Born in the USA for an ad explaining what was at stake in Trump v Barbara, the US supreme court case that later overturned Trump’s attempt to deny birthright citizenship to the children of noncitizens.

The awards ceremony is hosted by Laverne Cox, the actor and advocate for transgender rights.

The White House Correspondents’ Association just treated the country to a cringeworthy AI video in which the founders of the American republic toasted the assembled press corps.

“By the way, that was AI, in case you missed it,” the outgoing White House correspondents’ president, Weija Jiang of CBS News, pointed out, before handing over to her successor, Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News correspondent who married a Republican congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick, last month.

In May, Donald Trump dodged a question from Heinrich by instead mocking her then fiance and threatening to have him ousted from his seat for supposed disloyalty. “Her husband votes against me all the time. Can you imagine? I don’t know what’s with him. You better ask him what’s with him,” Trump said. “He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that? It doesn’t work out well. I don’t know why he does.”

Before Donald Trump speaks to the White House Correspondents’ Association, a post-dinner ceremony celebrating journalism and the first amendment began with praise for journalists in the room who covered the attack on the prior dinner in April from Weija Jiang, the WHCA president.

After Jiang said “no matter how complicated or tense the relationship is between the press and the presidency, what we share is far more important than anything else and that is our duty: to serve the American people”, her remarks were met with polite applause from most of the people room, but when the camera cut to Trump, he was not clapping.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has praised an agreement reached on Friday with Warner Bros and Paramount that halts their proposed merging until 1 June 2027, or until a court rules on a challenge to the merger filed by a coalition of 12 attorneys general, whichever comes first

“The Warner Bros./ Paramount merger is expected to result in higher prices, lower content quality, and fewer movies and TV shows. The proposed $110 billion merger — the largest in Hollywood history — would combine two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors and two of the five major owners of basic cable channels, extinguishing competition between Paramount and Warner Bros., and inflicting substantial harm on movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences nationwide,” Bonta’s office said in a statement.

“Our argument against this illegal merger is straightforward: When too few corporations have too much power in markets central to American life, it makes things more expensive, and it makes things worse,” Bonta said. “Today’s agreement is great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy. We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day.”

The rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner is under way at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington DC, three months after the original event in April was interrupted by gunfire, after a man rushed through a security checkpoint outside the ballroom.

Donald Trump was on stage for the opening remarks by the White House Correspondents’ Association president, CBS News correspondent Weija Jiang.

“Let’s try this again, because one thing about this press corps is, we always have a follow-up,” she began. “Many of you were also with us in April. You came as guests, but within moments, you went to work.”

“An assassination attempt on our president is an attack on democracy itself,” she said. “Tonight, our message is this: we are back. We will not be intimidated. We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”

Trump is expected to speak soon. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, promised that the president who attacks the non-partisan media relentlessly as “the enemy of the people” would deliver “a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious” remarks.