White House Correspondents Dinner returns, Joe Biden to headline the gala

US President Joe Biden is set to make witty remarks in front of over 2,000 guests attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), a black-tie gala making its return two years after the COVID-19 pandemic. The guest list includes actors, journalists and officials who will occupy their $350 seats at the event. 

Scheduled to commence around 9 pm at the Washington Hilton, the bash will reportedly have Bill Gates, Drew Barrymore, Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson in attendance. 

With a big guest list comes an even bigger risk of contracting COVID-19, something that this month’s Gridiron Club dinner is proof of. Over 10% of the event’s attendees contracted the infectious disease after the dinner.

To avoid this, the WHCD requires guests to provide a negative COVID-19 test report and a vaccination certificate. For the country’s president, restrictions go up a notch, forbidding him to relish items from the event’s food menu. 

Also Read: United States President Joe Biden proposes $33 billion package for Ukraine

When the dinner concludes, cryptocurrency platform Binance Colombian Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzon will be the hosts of an extravagant afterparty at a mansion in the neighbourhood of Dupont Circle. 

With the president set to headline the dinner and make a few jokes here and there, it will be interesting to see how he manages to joke himself out of a time when the gross domestic product has dropped to an annual rate of 1.4%, Russia has waged a war against Ukraine, and an extremely polarized political environment is looming over the United States. 

Also Read: United States accuse Russia of fanning separatism in Bosnia amid Ukraine crisis

Nevertheless, Biden‘s speech has been a work in progress for a couple of weeks, according to officials. While the script has reached its final draft now, Biden has asked his writers to make sure the speech is packed with a lot more than one-liners and witty remarks. 

His speech has bits and pieces of inputs from some of his funniest White House officials, including speechwriter Dan Cluchey. 

With Biden in the spotlight, one can expect a night filled with laughs, drinks and a dash of second-hand embarrassment, if the jokes are, in the words of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, “not funny at all.”