By Michele Salcedo
Associated Press
ABOVE PHOTO: President Barack Obama high-fives late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel as Caren Bohan, a Reuters journalist and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association looks on during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Saturday, April 28, 2012 in Washington.
(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama scattered the barbs during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as he poked fun at White House races past and present, the Secret Service and Donald Trump.
Even the entrance to his speech Saturday night was part of his schtick. The president walked off stage just before he took the podium with an alleged “hot mic,” making fun of getting caught last month on an open microphone with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“What am I doing here,” he asks off stage. “I’m opening for Jimmy Kimmel and telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian.”
Once on stage, the president revisited last year’s dinner, which took place as Navy SEALS were dispatched to capture and kill Osama bin Laden.
“Last year at this time, this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals,” Obama said. Then a picture of real estate mogul Donald Trump appeared on the room’s television monitors. The president last year delivered a scathing roast of Trump, who flirted with running for the Republican nomination and claimed he had solved the “mystery” of Obama’s birth certificate.
Obama also took a shot at the Republican congressional leadership, whom he thanked “for taking time from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws” to attend the dinner.
Four years ago, Obama recalled, he was locked in a tough primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretary of state. “She can’t stop drunk texting me from Cartagena,” he said, referring to their recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, where Clinton was photographed drinking a beer and dancing.
This year, Obama is the incumbent, but the dinner was far from a campaign-free zone. The president pointed out his similarities with the presumed Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
“We both think of our wives as our better halves, and the American people agree to an insulting extent,” the president said.
“We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob.”
The crack drew a thumbs up from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was in the audience. Santorum dropped out of the presidential primary campaign earlier this month. He had called Obama a snob for encouraging young Americans to attend college.
But Obama touched on serious themes as well, remembering The New York Times’ Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London who died while covering the uprising in Syria.
“Never forget that our country depends on you to help protect our freedom, our democracy and our way of life,” Obama said.
Then he returned to the lighter side: “I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew.”
Kimmel, the night’s featured entertainer, asked Obama: “You remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? That was hilarious.”
“There’s a term for guys like President Obama,” Kimmel said with a pause. “Probably not two terms.”
Proceeds from the dinner go toward scholarships for aspiring journalists and awards for distinction in the profession.
The association was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president. Every president since Calvin Coolidge has attended the dinner.
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