After two years of cancellations, the White House Correspondents Dinner is coming back in 2022, and The Daily Show host Trevor Noah has been tapped as its entertainer.
It almost feels like it’s been a three-year hiatus. The 2019 event took place as planned, but organizers chose a historian, Ron Chernow, as speaker instead of a comedian, because President Donald Trump and his cabinet had taken umbrage with jokes made by comic Michelle Wolf at the previous year’s WHCD.
Before that, the event welcomed a long line of comedians for its entertainment, including Hasan Minhaj (2017), Larry Wilmore (2016), Cecily Strong (2015), Joel McHale (2014), Conan O’Brien (2013), and Jimmy Kimmel (2012). (Saturday Night Live‘s Kenan Thompson was supposed to host the WHCD in 2020.) With Noah, the dinner appears to be back on track.
Michael Schwartz/CBS via Getty Images Trevor Noah will serve as the entertainer for the 2022 White House Correspondents Dinner.
The WHCD had been canceled the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but organizers announced the dinner will be held April 30, with all guests and staff required to be vaccinated.
This will also be the first time a sitting president will attend the dinner since 2016.
“The White House Correspondents’ Dinner celebrates Americans’ freedoms and the working people who bring the news to the world,” Steven Portnoy of CBS News Radio, president of the WHCA, said in a statement. “Trevor is an incredible talent who keeps us laughing — and thinking — four nights a week.”
Referring to the name of Noah’s world comedy tour, Portnoy added, “We can’t wait for him to help bring our 100-year Washington tradition ‘Back to Abnormal.'”
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