Roy Wood Jr. is unsure the White House Correspondents’ Dinner will ever see a comedian host again.
While talking with Rolling Stone, the former “Daily Show” staffer explained that the current administration clearly has no interest in being ribbed and prodded by comedians during the dinner – but that doesn’t mean Democrats are going to sign up for it whenever they return to office.
“I did it under the Biden administration, so the vibes were a little bit different,” Wood Jr. said. “And when I say the vibes, I mean it wasn’t necessarily an adversarial audience, but you definitely take your shots. Tucker Carlson had gotten fired that week. CNN was going through restructuring—they had just fired Don Lemon. So there were a lot of things that I could have poked and prodded at.”
He continued: “But as a gig, I don’t know if we’ll ever have a comedian at the correspondence dinner again. For all of what we’re about with Republicans not wanting comedians, we don’t know if these new Democrats are going to want to be criticized, because if the joke has truth in it, then it goes further.”
Wood Jr. handled the hosting for the dinner in 2023 and “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost took the reins in 2024. Last year the event did not include a comedy host or the sitting president as Trump opted out – though they did initially invite Amber Ruffin to host before rescinding the offer. Although the show went on as usual, the first dinner under Trump’s second term felt a bit odd given the president’s attacks on the press following his return to office.
“There’s no president. There’s no comedian. It’s just us,” Eugene Daniels, an MSNBC correspondent, said in kicking off the evening, adding that it has been “an extremely difficult year for all of you. It’s been difficult for this association. We’ve been tested, attacked.”
