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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

President Trump Addresses the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the First Time Since the Botched April Dinner. Aired 10:50- 11p ET

Aired July 24, 2026 - 22:50   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[22:50:24]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: All right, welcome to a special edition of "NewsNight." We're here in New York after a more than hour-long speech by President Trump at his very first White House Correspondents' Dinner as President of the United States.

The speech was a lot of things, but I think a lot of people at home are probably wondering, what was that?

PETER MEIJER (D), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, MICHIGAN AND FOUNDING PARTNER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: There were jokes that landed very well. There were jokes that did not. There were times when the remarks that were being delivered were funny and were flowing, and then there were times they were veered off script.

I really wish that the Barry Weiss-Mojtaba Khamenei joke would have been delivered a little bit better. I thought there was some substance behind that one that the room would have took it as tongue-in-cheek.

PHILLIP: It's kind of hard to wrap your head around.

MEIJER: But it's also like a shift in tone, right? Because this is three months after the first one had to be delayed because of an assassination attempt. We're kind of up on the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination. It's been just celebrated, not celebrated, marked the two-year anniversary of the Butler assassination.

Shinzo Abe's assassination was four years ago this month. So I think Trump is trying to have some levity. He's got some real emotions at play, too, though.

CHUCK ROCHA, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SOLIDARITY STRATEGIES, FOUNDER, NUESTRO PAC, CO-HOST, "THE LATINO VOTE" PODCAST AND SUBSTACK AUTHOR, "THE ROCHA REVOLUTION": I'd say there's two things that stuck out to me. One is there were no mention of an election that's coming up in 102 days, which is on lots of folks' minds. And the other thing that stood with me, and I've said it here before, is that if you like Donald Trump, it was great.

You thought it was great. You got your MAGA on. You felt proud, you thought he was funny as hell. But if you like Democrats, you thought he was pretty ignorant. And if

you're a middle-roader, you're still like, I'm not even going to watch this.

PHILLIP: I'm going to disagree with you only in the sense that I think for Trump, this was not funny. Trump can be very funny, but this speech was like a low-energy retread of a lot of old stuff. And it just wasn't his normal humor.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Low-energy Donald. In a word, I would just call it, it was a bore. It was a bore for a man that I think can crack a lot of jokes.

And the bottom line is this. I have a lot of trouble sleeping at night. I often have to take Benadryl, but I'm not going to have to take any Benadryl tonight because I could just replay that speech and I'll fall asleep like that.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND PUBLISHER, "THE ROOT: I agree. Honestly, though, it was the exact speech I thought it was going to get. Like, that is Donald Trump.

Bad jokes, making fun of people, slinging insults, lying. I mean, this is him, guys. Like, he's not going to change. It just was a terrible performance of his regular terrible hits.

ARTHUR AIDALA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY, AND HOST, "THE ARTHUR AIDALA POWER HOUR": All right, let's get our priorities straight. Stay off the Benadryl, go with magnesium or melatonin.

PHILLIP: Don't do melatonin.

AIDALA: Okay, how about chamomile tea?

Look, Donald Trump, someone said in the last panel, sometimes you get up there and you knock it out of the park and sometimes you get out there and you don't. And I have had to host a lot of going away parties for D.A.s, officers, and judges.

And most of the times, I'm really good. And then there's a couple of times when I fell a little flat. The only joke that I cracked up on, whoever wrote that was good, was Bruce Springsteen, bored to run, I thought that was kind of a little bit clever, a play on words.

For the most part, I mean, Abby, we were here together watching. He was kind of droning on. I mean, I learned for the first time that there's seven levels now in front of the new ballroom that he's going to have for six months.

PHILLIP: We all learn something new every day.

AIDALA: Honestly, that was one of the most substantive things I took out of the old.

PHILLIP: You know, he also cleared up a lot of speculation about his last appearance at a White House correspondent's dinner before he was President, when President Obama cracked a joke at his expense, or several jokes, actually, at his expense. And here's what Trump said about that tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: There's one time in particular when Barack Hussein Obama hosted it. Do you know who that is?

And he hit me hard, but actually he hit me with respect. In fact, I loved the evening. I looked at my wife, I said, Can you believe it? All these people, that's all they're doing is talking about me.

I love this dinner. It's true.

And Obama was nice. You know, it's amazing how things work out. He actually showed a picture of the White House with a big Trump on top, like I put a sign. And you know, I'm sort of doing that when you think about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: That's funny because it's true.

When you look back on that Obama video, he got it exactly right, that Trump basically turned it into, you know, like a Chinese food restaurant.

AIDALA: Well, he wants to do it with the Oval Office.

PHILLIP: With the Oval Office labeled.

[22:55:06]

But do you buy what he was saying, which is that it didn't hurt his feelings, it didn't affect his decision?

ALLISON: There are people, if they actually got checks for living rent-free in Donald Trump's head, would never have to work again. Barack Obama.

ROCHA: Hillary Clinton.

ALLISON: Hillary Clinton.

AIDALA: Kaitlan Collins.

ALLISON: Yes. Kaitlan Collins, clearly. Shout out to Kaitlan, keep her name out of your mouth.

But, no, like, that night really agitated Donald Trump, I think, to actually run for President again. He was so insulted. He was so offended.

Of course, and he still talks about him. Barack Obama has not been President since 2016. Why are you bringing him up?

There has been a whole President between Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and now --

AIDALA: You and I talk this all the time. Whether you like it or not, and I would think you would like it, considering your history, Barack Obama is still the leader of the Democratic Party, it's not Joe Biden, it is not Nancy Pelosi.

These are people who are a little past their prime. It's not Chuck Schumer, it is Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

AIDALA: Yes, but you know who else he brought up?

AIDALA: It's not Kamala.

ALLISON: The first Democrat he brought up, I believe, was AOC. It actually was telling, like, there are things happening in this country that Donald Trump is paying attention to, and whether you like it or not, which you know I don't, Donald Trump does have his finger on the pulse sometimes of what people are paying attention to, and him playing out AOC, I would say, Democrats, wake up.

PHILLIP: Well, you know, almost to that point, this speech was not terribly funny, but it was a window into his mind, which is sort of stuck on this constant loop of, you know, shifty Adam Schiff, and all the name-calling, and it's just the same old stuff over and over again, and he can't even seem to get himself out of that cycle.

MEIJER: But to your point on the AOC, yes, there's criticism, but he reserves the harshest criticism for folks who are just not good at their jobs, the comedians who aren't funny, the journalists who don't seem to be smart, the folks who don't do this.

PHILLIP: We know that that is not true. He attacks journalists, I have to say, you know I have to say this, Peter, he attacked multiple journalists, including our colleagues, who he does not like because they are very good at their jobs, and one of the things he had to do tonight was sit on that stage while they were being awarded for their exceptional reporting of his scandals.

MEIJER: And he shook their hand.

PHILLIP: So, this is not about oh, they're bad at their job, this is about, I don't even care, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about the ones who won awards or the ones who didn't, or the comedians or whatever, he's mad because he doesn't like people who make him look bad. That's not a position of strength.

MEIJER: His remarks at the end were pretty gracious.

ALLISON: Come on.

MEIJER: His closing remarks.

ALLISON: The bar is so low.

MEIJER: No, fair enough. Closing remarks were not you guys are hell, it was thank you so much for having me, this has been wonderful. ALLISON: That is not gracious. That is common courtesy. That is just like baseline thank you for having me.

MEIJER: Courtesy and graciousness are kind of linked attributes.

ALLISON: I would actually just say like, let's demand more. Let's just say thank you for having me. Demand more. You deserve better. Trust me.

ENTEN: He's mad because his approval rating is lower than the percentage of that speech in which I was yawning. This is why he is so angry. He is so angry because he is an unpopular President, the least popular President at this point in their second term of any President this century.

And so he is lashing out because he knows that in a few months his party is going to face the voters and more likely than not, at least part of that party, at least in the House of Representatives, is going to get turned out of power and that is because Donald John Trump simply put, is significantly less popular than he was a year and a half ago.

ROCHA: That's the most important thing because he has won. As a democrat, I give him credit for winning. When you win the election, you get the polls, you get to run shit but that's why he's really mad.

AIDALA: But how accurate are those numbers? Because I was the guy who said all over TV the night before the election with Hillary Clinton, by 9:15 Hillary will be shooting off fireworks because all the polls showed she was going to crush him.

When he says 90 percent of the press is against him, 90 percent of the reporting, maybe it's only in the 80s, that was one of his jokes. How much does that influence those polls that you get now on your cell phone? You're the numbers guy. I'm not, I'm asking, I'm not making a point.

ENTEN: No, I think it's a genuine question, which is we obviously saw in 2016, in 2020, the polls did underestimate Donald Trump, but the one instance in which he was in the White House but not on the ballot in 2018, the polls were pretty much right on.

The bottom line is this, there are a lot of voters who will turn out for Donald Trump who traditionally have not turned out for other Republicans down ballot. We saw it last year in Virginia and New Jersey.

[23:00:02]

We've seen it in the special elections with Democrats outperforming. We just know that through history, when the President's approval rating is anywhere close to where Donald Trump is, let's say he's five points higher and somehow into the mid-40s, that's still really low heading into a midterm election.

AIDALA: I mean, is it? I don't know. It is. Yes.

ENTEN: The only Presidents who are able to actually gain seats with their party in the House of Representatives were Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002.

AIDALA: 1998? Not 1994?

ENTEN: No, not 1998. And their approval ratings were north of 60 percent.