Trump gives boring speech at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

I can’t stand Trump. But usually my anger at his antics keeps me interested in what he’s saying. Last night was different. His hour long speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was so boring, it should be sold as a sleep aid.

Thankfully, I’d recorded it on CSPAN. So after twenty minutes or so of watching this Lesson in How to Make Your Audience Wish They Were Watching Paint Dry Instead of You, I started pressing the 30 second advance on my remote in a vain attempt to find some genuine humor or even just some fresh insults.

Didn’t work.

Aside from a few minutes at the beginning of his speech, which probably was the last time Trump read verbatim from his teleprompter, our Authoritarian in Chief  resorted to lame attempts at humor, recycled jibes at Democrats (he kept saying Dumocrats), and disjointed ramblings that would seem normal coming from someone on a street corner yelling about whatever passes through their psychotic mind, but were freaking bizarre when spoken by the president of the United States.

If you ever find yourself still awake at 3 am and don’t want to take a sleeping pill, play this You Tube video. Soon you’ll be nodding off.

The smatterings of laughter and applause during Trump’s speech came almost entirely from some members of his cabinet and other administration officials who were at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Like attendees at a speech by the dictatorial ruler of North Korea, they knew that if they failed to provide Dear Leader with signs of the adulation that his fragile ego requires, they could be next on the “you’re fired!” chopping block.

Here’s how a story starts out by CNN’s media reporter, Brian Stelter, “Trump bombed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and proved its point.”

President Donald Trump bombed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it.

But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.

Members of the media mocking a leader’s dismal performance on live TV and all across the internet? In some other countries, that’s a criminal offense. But in the US, it’s the norm, so maybe Trump’s speech unwittingly underscored the theme of the dinner: America’s robust First Amendment protections.

In a rambling hour-long speech, Trump insulted journalists by name, repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with. “Does anyone understand this stuff?” he said at one point, and the answer was generally no.

Some of Trump’s remarks were “vicious,” as press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised. But more than anything, the speech was just… boring.

And boring is one thing Trump never, ever wants to be. He claimed to be singlehandedly keeping the news business afloat, commenting, “When I’m gone, you’re all going to be broke.”

“Nobody gives a damn about anybody else,” he said, and proceeded to count how many stories on The New York Times front page are about him.

Attendees were mostly silent while Trump delivered lines better suited to a MAGA rally than a black-tie dinner.

Trump’s low energy led more than one TV executive to muse that the president had stumbled upon a new technique against the media: Tank the ratings with a snoozefest.

If you long for the good old days when we had a charismatic, intelligent, competent, honest president who was a far better speaker than Trump, and also was adept at telling a joke, take a trip down memory lane and watch this video of Barack Obama’s 2011 speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s less than a third as long as Trump’s speech. And it isn’t boring.