Colin Jost’s 5 Best Lines at the 2024 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

The mood was anything but light at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, D.C. on Saturday night. Just outside the Washington Hilton, where the event took place, demonstrators gathered to protest the ongoing Israel–Hamas War, wearing bloody press jackets to symbolize the 97 Palestinian journalists killed so far since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.

That was the scene that greeted journalists, politicos, and celebrities including Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris, Gayle King, host Colin Jost’s wife Scarlett Johansson, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Florida Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost as they convened for a night normally known for allowing media and political power players to dress up and have some fun at one another’s expense. However, comedy was the ultimate business of the night, and President Joe Biden eventually got down to it, skewering former President Donald Trump (and, to be fair, his own media reputation) before introducing Jost. Below, find a roundup of Jost’s best, most on-the-nose political jokes:

“Wordle is here! Sorry, I mean the New York Times. I forgot they do stuff in addition to puzzles.”It’s not entirely clear how this joke went down with the New York Times journalists in the room, but the laughs were definitely audible.

“The president doesn’t call it cocaine, he calls it high-speed rail.”Any joke that references Biden’s extreme enthusiasm for Amtrak is funny to me, whether it comes from Jost or from Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock.

“We’re all here tonight at ‘nerd prom’…well, Matt Gaetz is at regular prom.”Thank you, Jost, for remembering what Gaetz has going on.

“It’s after 10 p.m. Sleepy Joe is still awake, while Trump has spent the last week falling asleep in court every morning—though Fox News just said he was being anti-woke.”Sure, making fun of Fox News at an event like this is low-hanging fruit, but sometimes low-hanging fruit is delicious.

“The New York playboy took your abortion rights away, and the guy who’s trying to give them back is an 80-year-old Catholic.”Too real.