President Joe Biden was among the scheduled speakers at the annual event, hosted this year by Trevor Noah.
Biden will be facing more than 2,600 attendees while he tries to strike a careful balance at a pivotal moment for the country. His administration is looking to turn the page on the pandemic even as the virus remains a threat nationally and close to home. Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive this week and Dr. Anthony Fauci skipped the dinner for health precautions.
The White House has stressed the abundance of the antiviral pill Paxlovid, which has been shown to reduce by 90% severe outcomes from the virus among those at highest risk. The U.S. is experiencing a COVID-19 case spike from a highly contagious subvariant of omicron, with confirmed infections rising to about 44,000 per day, up from 26,000 a month ago.
In addition to the looming threat of the virus, Biden planned to take the mic as a massive and deadly invasion of Ukraine continued to unfold at the hands of Russian forces. The correspondents’ dinner debuted in 1921. Three years later, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to attend and all have since, except Trump. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon opted not to attend every year of their presidencies, however, and Ronald Reagan, then recovering from an assassination attempt, missed the 1981 installment — but called in from Camp David.
As vice president in 2014, Biden appeared in a comedy video with the star of HBO’s “Veep,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which drew big laughs at the correspondents’ dinner. The White House director of speech writing, Vinay Reddy, and longtime Biden adviser Mike Donilon worked on Biden’s remarks for this year, the White House said, tapping material from a variety of people both inside and outside government.
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