The president came, he saw, he joked, he insulted and talked too long. And yet, Donald Trump’s presence was the major reason why the White House Correspondents’ dinner was such a smashing success.

A make-up event for the dinner in April that was dramatically cut short by a would-be assassin’s attempt to kill Trump and members of his cabinet, Friday’s version turned out to be far better and much more meaningful than the original would have been.

The reason is that the near-tragedy in April inspired the second try as a unifying event and a living testament to American exceptionalism.

Indeed, when this president and the nation’s major media group actually agree on something, as they did Friday, it’s breaking news and time to STOP THE PRESSES!

Most of the credit goes to Trump, who heartily saluted the undaunted courage of the Secret Service agents and DC police who stopped the shooter on that near-tragic night. He also managed to pull off the impossible by getting the 700 journalists and others in the hotel ballroom to stand and applaud security officers and our military.

Given that most journalists are lefty Democrats and members of the hate-Trump rabble of DEI and defund the police, getting them to participate in the salute was no small accomplishment.

The president was also gracious in staying to the very end and personally congratulating journalists who won awards for stories that, in most cases, were highly critical of him and his policies.

He was such a good sport that after shaking hands with Wall Street Journal reporters he had sued over their article about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the president showed a half-smile, threw up his arms in apparent exasperation and shook his head, as if to say, what the hell am I doing here?

Prez in good spirits

Given that he had boycotted the annual event in his first term as well as last year, some second-guessing was inevitable.

But he nonetheless seemed to enjoy himself for the most part, and offered more than a few zingers when it was his turn to talk.

“This place is really the largest group of ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ people ever put together at one time,” he declared. That one drew some knowing laughs, but others, such as personal insults of specific journalists, were met with stony silence.

So too were his well-worn swipes at Dem senators Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren, proving they are better suited for his campaign rallies.

At one point, when a line in his staff-prepared speech got the silent treatment, Trump interjected, “That was the only thing I thought was good in this whole fricking stupid speech they wrote. That was the only good one and that went down with not exactly great laughter.”

Credit for the success of the evening also goes to Weijia Jiang, a Washington reporter for CBS and president of the correspondents’ association.

In the spirit of America’s 250th birthday, she aimed to turn the event into a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who defend it.

She added a personal dimension with a moving story about her family’s arrival from China, where she was born and how they were graciously welcomed into West Virginia coal country, where some customers at their restaurant paid with deer meat.

She said her life and career, where she gets to ask the president questions in the Oval Office, are possible “only in America” and demonstrate how extraordinary our nation is.

Unfortunately, that fundamental truth is so much eyewash to a group of disgruntled journalists who did their best to sabotage the event. Some 500 of them signed a nasty statement calling it “hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it.”

‘Normalize relations’

The statement went on to urge the association to use the program, televised by C-Span, to “condemn the administration’s actions from the podium and pledge to fight all attempts to undermine this core pillar of a functioning democracy.”

Jiang rejected the pressure in no uncertain terms, saying the dinner was part of an effort to “normalize relations” between the Trump administration and journalists and find compromises by “working together.”

“We are not political, and obviously we stand against any actions that are meant to intimidate and threaten and chill free speech, and we have made that very clear,” she added. “But again, I don’t think issuing strongly worded statements is effective.”

Had she been so inclined, she might have extended her criticism to note that some of the prominent outside critics were instrumental in creating a media industry that has lost the trust of most Americans.

Among them was Dan Rather, who was booted from CBS for using forged documents in a September surprise effort to help try to defeat president George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign.

Another signee was Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor who beclowned himself with near-daily disputes with Trump and White House aides in the president’s first term. Acosta’s antics made him such a liability to CNN that he quit rather than accept a network demotion to the graveyard shift.

The damage caused by Rather, Acosta and many other Dem activists with press passes is inescapable.

One result is a Gallup survey finding that confidence in the media has reached a new low. Just 28% of respondents say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust “in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”

The numbers, although they are part of a longer trend, mark a rapid decline from just five years ago, when 40 percent of adults expressed confidence and trust.

There are numerous reasons for the pattern, including social media, but partisan bias is obviously a huge factor. Just as most major news organizations jumped on the Dems’ bandwagon that Trump was a Russian asset in 2016, they also saw nothing wrong with Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline until he mumbled and stumbled through his June 2024 debate with Trump.

One effect of the pattern is that Republicans’ confidence in the mass media, which Gallup says hasn’t risen above 21% in a decade, has now plunged to single digits, at just 8%.

Independents’ trust is down to 27%, a historic low, yet 51 percent of Democrats trust the media.

The enormous gap should settle the debate about whether most media outlets are biased in favor of Dems. They clearly are, so the only remaining question is whether the partisans are going to get back to delivering the news instead of propaganda.