• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

Like driving by a car accident, it was difficult to look away when grazing through the cable channels last Friday night and coming across President Trump delivering a speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington.

It was speech-as-spectacle. Thoughts of moving on came often. And yet, turning away raised the risk of missing something.

But what? That is hard to define, but the performance he put on was worrisome and fascinating at the same time. It was also unpredictable.

As he spoke, you wondered: Where will he go next? What topics and obsessions will he address? Who will he insult? Who will he praise? 

One person who came in for praise was David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, who has granted Bari Weiss carte blanche to change the culture and direction of CBS News.

Trump’s remarks about Ellison served as one of dozens of examples of the way his speech veered randomly into non sequiturs and dangling thoughts. 

President Biden used to do that, and the right said he was senile. Biden may very well be senile, but what about Trump?

Try and follow this rambling ode to David Ellison. “Tonight’s event is even crazier than last time,” said Trump, referring to the WHCA dinner in April that was suddenly disrupted by a would-be assassin.

“In fact, it’s so successful,” Trump said, “that I’ve been informed by CBS News’ David Ellison -- who’s going to do a fantastic job. He’s the owner. He’s the owner. He bought it, spent a lot of money, and he’s going to make, I think, fantastic changes and keep some of the great stuff going -- but that next year, they’re going to call it the Trump White House Correspondence Center.”

“He told me that, and I like that very much, Trump continued. “We’re gonna change the name of it, OK?”

“Well, it’s gonna be so hot, just like our country is hot,” he said. “But to be honest, it’s just about the only way that they’re gonna ever get me back here,” he vowed. “You’re gonna have to change the name of the dinner.”

Of course, the president was joking, right? Or maybe he wasn’t. With Trump, who knows what goes on in his head?

One thing that he apparently believes deeply in is his ability to go off-script. But listening to his speech, it was easy to wonder if there even was a script or any semblance of a written speech at all.

Here, in one colossal, marathon of Trump-speak, were all the topics he holds dear, but only for mere minutes or seconds at a time.

The event was held at Washington’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which is the current occupant of the old Washington post office building near the White House that the Trump family once owned.

Trump still loves the chandeliers he installed there. “See those beautiful chandeliers?” he asked.

“I can tell you everything about them if you’d like to know. … I’m looking at them saying I wonder if I could walk out with those chandeliers because you can’t buy them. …. I won’t mention that they’re Czech crystal because I’d like to say everything’s made here, but they are Czech crystal and they are beautiful,” Trump said.

Other hot topics for Trump included:

The huge ballroom he is building at the White House: “It’s really going, it’s moving fast. We’re ahead of schedule, we’re right on budget, and it’s gonna be something like I think no, no country has. I just visited China. They have this magnificent room, The Great Room. They call it The Great Room. It’s a great room, but what we have is gonna blow … there won’t be anything like it.”

The UFC Freedom 250 bouts held on the White House lawn in June: “When I announced that we’re gonna build a boxing ring outside the front door of the White House, that took a lot of heat. But it turned out that was, they say, about the most-viewed fight in history. It was beautiful. … And you saw the ring we built, Dana White, the great Dana White? And everything, we had the best fighters in the world. Turned out we had the best fights that we, that most people have ever seen.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper: “CNN is also here, and I’m very disappointed they didn’t bring Fake Tapper because he’s had a rough couple of years, Fake has.”

Rosie O’Donnell: “She’s one of the greatest sufferers of Trump derangement syndrome. She’s a sick young woman. Sick older woman, I guess now I have to say.”

Sen. Adam Schiff: “They thought about going with a professional clown for entertainment, but Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff was not available. … I hate some people, you know? I shouldn’t say this. I’m president. I’m not supposed to hate. I’m supposed to love everybody. But he is a terrible person. He’s a liar. And I called him watermelon head because he has the largest head I’ve ever seen with the smallest neck, pencil neck. How does that big, fat, ugly head stand on a little pencil neck?”

Transcribed quotes of President Trump at last Friday’s White House Correspondents Association dinner in Washington courtesy of Roll Call, which has the full transcript. https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-speech-white-house-correspondents-dinner-july-24-2026/