Jimmy Kimmel Runs an Unofficial White House Correspondents’ Dinner Monologue After the Real One Books a Mentalist

This weekend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner will break from decades of tradition. Instead of a comedian roasting the president and the press, the event booked a mentalist. The switch is widely read as a move to avoid offending Donald Trump, who is attending the dinner for the first time since taking office.

Jimmy Kimmel responded Thursday night by giving the comedy the dinner won’t touch. On his ABC show, he opened with what he called a “faux All-American White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” framing it as a service for anyone who wants to hear what a room full of journalists and politicians might laugh at if the president weren’t, in Kimmel’s words, a “trembling drama queen who’s scared of comedy.”

Standing at a podium, Kimmel scanned the formal wear and landed early. “I haven’t seen this much black,” he said, “since every page of the Trump-Epstein files.” The joke landed with the kind of bluntness that late-night monologues still deliver and that the real dinner will now politely avoid.

The bit wasn’t just a few one-liners. It was a small act of cultural maintenance. Kimmel reminded viewers that a room full of powerful people being joked about is not a threat. It’s a ritual that, when it works, says something about who can take it. This year, the White House Correspondents’ Association decided almost nobody can.