Glitzy Parties and Gaza Protests Collide at the White House ...

Chef and restaurateur José Andrés was in the house, as was Bill Nye, sipping a martini near the back of the room. I asked him what he’s been up to this weekend. “Networking for the betterment of humankind,” he told me. “We’re talking about how we’re going to use our platforms in media to engage people in the challenge of climate change.” Fair enough. So what’s the best thing he’d seen all night? “My wife,” he said.

L-R: Dr. Anthony Fauci; Kellyanne Conway; Desi Lydic, Jordan Klepper, and Tammy Haddad; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar and John Bessler.

While some events come and go, veteran TV producer Tammy Haddad’s annual garden brunch is, apparently, forever. The event began in Haddad’s backyard 31 years ago and is now held at a Georgetown home owned by venture capitalist Mark Ein, a co-owner of the Washington Commanders—which would explain why someone dressed as the team’s mascot, a six-foot-tall hog named Major Tuddy, was greeting people as they made their way into the main tent, which was particularly packed this year due to intermittent rain. Among the sea of journalists, political figures, and media executives—Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien, Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff, NBCUniversal Chairman Cesar Conde, Axios’s VandeHei—were a handful of Baltimore police, whom Haddad was honoring for their work on the collapsed bridge.

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci mingled in a black turtleneck, Andrew Ross Sorkin chatted with Melber, and Ben Smith caught up with Klobuchar and Substack’s Hamish McKenzie. “I am always impressed with Amy Klobuchar’s pain tolerance for this stuff,” Smith told me later. On my way to grab a Bloody Mary, I ran into The View co-host and former Trump aide Alyssa Farah Griffin. “I had to come because it might be the last White House Correspondents’ Weekend before Trump is back,” she told me. “I’ve heard people say, listen, if he got re-elected, it might save cable news for another decade, and my thought is like, ok, but what about democracy?”

You could spot Senator John Fetterman from a mile away inside the Politico-CBS reception tent on Saturday night, not only because he is 6’8”, but because he was the only person in sweats. Not one for formality, Fetterman played up his signature style in a tuxedo sweatshirt and black shorts. He was chatting with CBS chief election correspondent Robert Costa, who’d brought his dad as his plus one this year. “This is a very brief break for me,” said Costa, who has been covering Trump’s criminal trial in New York. “I essentially live in lower Manhattan now,” the DC-based journalist joked. “This weekend is nice to celebrate journalism and to get together and socialize for a few hours, but we all need to buckle up,” Costa added. “This will be a rare party this year, a rare moment of respite for this industry. Because we’re covering a convulsive moment in America.”

I found Andrea Mitchell nearby, in a sparkly silver gown. The veteran chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News had spent the morning out in Chevy Chase, playing tennis, working out with a trainer, and packing for an upcoming trip to the Middle East. “I’m traveling with the Secretary of State,” she told me.

During the dinner, Kelly O’Donnell, a senior White House reporter for NBC News and the president of the correspondents’ association, spoke about journalists who have been captured, including Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria nearly 10 years ago, and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia on bogus espionage charges since last March. Gershkovich’s parents were in attendance. O’Donnell also noted the more than 100 journalists who have been killed in the past six months of the Israel-Hamas war.

Clockwise from top L: Colin Jost and US President Joe Biden; First Lady Jill Biden; Eugene Daniels and US Vice President Kamala Harris.All from Getty Images.

Biden did not mention the war during his speech, though he did call on Russia’s Vladimir Putin to release Gershkovich. “We are doing everything we can,” he said.

“There are some who call you the enemy of the people. That’s wrong and it’s dangerous,” Biden told the crowd, adding that “the defeated former president has made no secret of his attack on our democracy.”

Jost ribbed the president and the press, as expected, at one point saying he was honored to be at what might be, “judging by the swing state polls, the last White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” He also struck a serious tone: “When you look at the levels of freedom throughout history, and even around the world today, this is the exception,” he said, adding: “This freedom is incredibly rare and the journalists in this room help protect that freedom, and we cannot ever take that for granted.”

The hot ticket this year was the NBCUniversal after party, held at the French Ambassador’s Residence—the outside of which was lit up in rainbow with NBC’s peacock logo—a few blocks away from the Hilton. “For a party that was impossible to get into, there’s a lot of fucking people here,” one journalist grumbled.

People were letting loose, dancing alongside portraits of historical French figures hanging on the wood-paneled walls, sipping French 75’s, and eating passed hors d'oeuvres (lots of salmon). Leaning into the SNL theme, there was a Weekend Update photobooth that guests embraced as they got increasingly drunk. Everyone was fawning around the celebrities who had congregated on the tented patio—ScarJo and Jost, Pine, and Jon Hamm, who I spotted chatting with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. Standing a few feet away was senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, holding an unlit cigar as “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” played throughout the party. And there was Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, drinking a Belvedere and cran. “I had a dynamite weekend,” he told me.

“Colin Jost had a pretty apt joke tonight when he said this may be the final White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” CNN’s Jim Acosta told me. “I think people have to think seriously about what’s going on right now.”

Maybe tomorrow.