The Hostess With The Roast: Samantha Bee Planning “White House Dinner” Counter-Event

The hostess with the mostest: or shall we say, the roast?! Samantha Bee and her team are organizing a counter-event the night of the White House Correspondent Dinner in Washington on April 29th. This alternative gala, which is being called “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” and was announced on Monday, will be at the Willard Hotel. Ms. Bee said that it was not an attempt to comment on or compete with that other, better-known banquet, but a night to include jokes about Mr. Trump that she and like-minded comedians want to make.

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“We’re not trying to supersede it,” she said in a telephone interview. “We just want to be there in case something happens — or doesn’t happen — and ensure that we get to properly roast the president.”

Ms. Bee said that she and her “Full Frontal” producers got the idea for their event after Mr. Trump’s election in November.

“We were talking out loud about whether we thought the White House Correspondents’ dinner would change during a Trump presidency, or if it would even exist,” she said. “And then we thought, Why don’t we just do one, just to do it in the way that we would want it done if we were hosting it?”

The “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” will probably be shown on TBS in some form; Ms. Bee said that those details were still being worked out, as was a lineup of talent.

“We have binders full of people, but we don’t have any specifics to offer yet,” she said. Ms. Bee said that proceeds from her event would go to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The decades-old dinner held by the Correspondents’ Association, which advocates press accessibility at the White House and gives out journalism awards and scholarships, has come under scrutiny in recent years.

Some news organizations and observers regard it as a too-chummy atmosphere for reporters to hobnob with the officials they are supposed to be covering objectively and adversarially. (The New York Times stopped sending journalists to the dinner in 2008.)

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