‘Y’all Give It Up For Dark Brandon’: Roy Wood Jr. Roasts Trump, DeSantis, Thomas, Fox, and Don Lemon at White House Correspondents’ Dinner (FULL)

Comic Roy Wood Jr. of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show hosted the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C. on Saturday and took shots at Fox News, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tucker Carlson, Clarence Thomas, Mitch McConnell, Dick Cheney, other Republicans, and even recently fired CNN host Don Lemon during his roast style remarks. Not to mention President Joe Biden a bit.

Earlier in the evening, Wood told CNN’s Jim Acosta that he feels it’s important and fair to hit both sides and to hold elected officials accountable.

“I don’t want to come in here and make this some situation where you’re telling jokes only on one side of the room,” said Wood. He added a bit later in the segment that it’s “an opportunity to spit whatever I want back at elected officials and try to hold them accountable a little bit.”

In his remarks at the dinner, Wood mainly focused his jokes on Republicans and Fox News, with some oblique near-criticisms of Democrats peppered in, as well. The Clarence Thomas and Don Lemon bits were the most extensive.

“Don Lemon released a statement saying he got fired from CNN. Then CNN released a statement saying that they offered Don a meeting,” he said. “They had to part ways because Don Lemon can’t even accurately report a story about Don Lemon!”

Interestingly, the comic also implied the media has a liberal bias when covering scandals, treating Trump’s documents case differently than Biden’s. He referenced that Biden documents scandal more than one time during the set.

For the rest of his Biden jokes, Wood cracked that Biden might fall asleep due to his age, but quickly offset that by saying how awesome the president is when he wakes up.

His jokes about Dominion’s lawsuit were pretty great.

Nothing was scandalously harsh regardless of the target or their ideology and the audience responded positively throughout with only a few groans.

He also spoke more seriously about the importance of journalism, particularly local news, and about the hard balancing act of the necessity of getting truth to people versus the cost to do so.

Watch the entire WHCD remarks above, via C-SPAN and the White House Correspondents’ Association.