This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 23 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a Washington tradition in which the president and members of the press get together, have a few drinks and tell a few jokes at each other’s expense. It’s an annual event, but the 2011 dinner was especially notable.
That was the year that then-President Barack Obama got up and absolutely roasted Donald Trump — and there’s one joke from that night that has a certain resonance today. At the time, Trump was mulling a run for president. During his set, Obama said that, if elected, Trump “certainly would bring some change to the White House.”
Authoritarian leaders can become so caught up in projecting their own power that their levels of blatant public corruption just get more laughable as they go.
Obama joked about an alternative universe in which Trump found his way into the White House and mused about what the real estate developer would do to the historic building, sharing a mocked-up picture showing it fitted out with golden columns and a neon sign bearing Trump’s name.
Fast-forward 14 years, and we are, of course, now living in that alternate universe that Obama conjured up that night. By now, you have seen the images of Trump’s construction crews tearing down the entire East Wing of the White House to make room for a gaudy new ballroom that the president plans to build in its place.
Now, it can be frustrating, even infuriating, to watch Trump destroy a building that belongs to all of us, without approval from Congress or anyone else, just because he feels like it. But in doing so, the president is literally making himself the punch line of a 14-year-old joke — a joke about what might happen if a narcissistic real estate developer with horrible taste became the president of the United States.
Trump is proving once again that he remains a captive of the very stereotype that’s made him a target of ridicule for so many years. He just can’t seem to help himself. In that way, Trump himself is a joke, a walking, talking parody.
That’s not to say his actions in office aren’t dangerous — they are — but here’s the thing: Authoritarian leaders can become so caught up in projecting their own power that their levels of blatant public corruption just get more laughable as they go.
Let me give you an example. On Thursday, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the head of a cryptocurrency exchange, who was convicted of violating money laundering laws after he allowed criminals to use his platform to finance everything from child sex abuse to drug trafficking to terrorism. It was an outrageous move, made all the more outrageous by the fact that the company he founded has major business ties to the Trump family’s own crypto venture.
When Trump was asked about that pardon, he lashed out in his typical way. First, he said he had no idea what the reporter was talking about, even though the company Zhao founded has been campaigning for a pardon for a year. Then, Trump seemed to remember who Zhao was and told reporters that “a lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything … He served four months in jail and they say that he was not guilty of anything.” This is equally ludicrous, because he pleaded guilty.
Look, recognizing the absurdity of that doesn’t minimize the danger of Trump — it minimizes Trump himself, it exposes him for the small man he is, and it makes it easier to push back against his corruption.
So now, a number of Trump’s opponents are showing that it isn’t so hard to stand up to an insecure bully. Ever since he retook office, the president and his allies in Congress have been targeting special counsel Jack Smith, investigating him and trying to paint him as some kind of devious criminal.
On Thursday, Smith punched back: His attorneys sent a letter to Congress proclaiming that “Mr. Smith respectfully requests the opportunity to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.”
In other words, Smith is telling Trump and his cronies that he wants to have this fight, and to have it in public. Smith is calling their bluff because he knows that what he can expose about Trump is far worse than anything they can do to him.
We’re seeing that same kind of fight from Democratic elected officials who are making the bet that it pays to stand up to Trump, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Both have taken the fight directly to the president, showing very effective ways of dealing with a bully. On Thursday, Trump backed off his threats to send National Guard troops into San Francisco after just one call with the city’s Democratic mayor. And while it remains to be seen what will happen in the end, the president has already blinked, and he’s shown that he will back down. Democrats can clearly sense that, and in so many different ways, they now feel emboldened to go on offense. For weeks, the White House has been lobbying Republican states to redraw their congressional maps and to give the president’s party a big advantage in the midterms. Trump’s tactics have succeeded in a few states, like Texas and North Carolina. Recognizing the absurdity of that doesn’t minimize the danger of Trump — it minimizes Trump himself, it exposes him for the small man that he is. But Democrats in California are pushing back with Proposition 50, giving voters a chance to stand up to Trump by voting to redraw their state maps to counter what Republicans did in Texas. And after a relentless pressure campaign from Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Republicans in Indiana still don’t have the votes to redraw maps there and steal more seats. Meanwhile, activists in Missouri are working to make sure voters have a chance to overrule any new maps in that state at the ballot box. On Thursday, Democrats in Virginia announced that they are initiating a plan to redraw maps there, potentially netting Democrats three new seats in Congress. That makes the state’s gubernatorial election in less than two weeks all the more important, but luckily for Democrats, Trump is hugely unpopular in that state. A new poll from Suffolk University found the president underwater by more than 12 points. So yes, Trump is cruel and corrupt, he’s knocking down the White House for a ballroom, and he’s shaking down American taxpayers while pardoning a crypto CEO who has been a huge proponent of his own crypto business. That is all true. But he is also weak. He is unpopular. He’s a joke. Democrats know that — and they know that it pays to stand up to him.
Jen Psaki is the host of "The Briefing with Jen Psaki" airing Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. EST. She is the former White House press secretary for President Joe Biden.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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