Apr. 25, 2026, 11:23 AM EDT

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Saturday defended his decision not to release a full autopsy of the party’s 2024 election losssaying it would “allow people to point fingers, place blame” instead of focusing on this year’s midterm elections.

Speaking to MS NOW’s “The Weekend,” Martin argued that “re-litigating” the 2024 presidential election would distract Democrats from their goal of winning the midterms in November and the 2028 presidential race.

He said Democrats are planning for what they expect to be an “unprecedented assault on our elections” from President Donald Trump, who has already signaled his intention to have federal officials “take over” the elections.

The party’s focus, Martin said, should be on protecting free and fair elections and defeating Republicans and Trump, rather than “engaging in a back and forth” over where it went wrong in 2024.

After then-Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump, the DNC ordered a review of where the party fell short. But 10 months later, Martin said the committee would not release the full 2024 autopsya decision that has prompted still-grieving Democrats — including potential 2028 candidates — to prescribe their own solutions to winning over voters.

Martin has repeatedly said that releasing the full report would distract Democrats from taking on Trump. But a growing number of DNC members, Democratic leaders and elected officials are urging him make those findings public, NBC News reported last week.

Martin said Saturday that he wants to keep the party’s focus on “the top lines” and that a 200-page report “allows people to sort of engage in navel-gazing.” He said it would not be helpful for people to harp on “what ifs” over the last election when “none of us have a time machine.”

“I’m not here to protect anyone, right? What I’m here to do is win elections,” he said, adding, “What we’re focusing on right now is the future, not the past.”

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Apr. 25, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

Breaking with decades of tradition, the White House Correspondents’ Association will not feature a comedian at its annual gala this Saturday night. Instead, “the world’s most celebrated mentalist,” Oz Pearlmanwill entertain the throngs of journos, politicos, corporate overlords and Beltway influencers at the Washington, D.C. Hilton.

Among those luminaries will be President Donald J. Trump who, in his capacity as president, has previously boycotted the event. This time around he’ll deliver an address. The president seems to be feeling confident about his performance, as evidenced by this social media post:

In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!

According to his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, he’s even been working with joke writers to prepare for the occasion.

All of which raises three interrelated questions. First, as the New York Times wonderedwhat could possibly go wrong? Second, will Trump dump on the countless media figures in attendance whom he has already disparaged, threatened, and even sued? And third, why is it that Trump can crack jokes about everything from the pope to unloading sludge on No Kings protestors, but won’t stand for a little comedic ribbing himself?

As for the mentalist, maybe he’ll ask the WHCA’s members to think of a number — like the number of cowardly decisions they’ve made in Trump’s second term. The non-profit, which describes its mission as helping “to facilitate robust coverage of the presidency,” has already sacked a comedian; last year the WHCA disinvited Amber Ruffin. Many felt the association was caving to pressure from MAGA world.

Ruffin certainly thought so. In 2025, she claimed that her dismissal was due to  “talking s—” about Trump. “I think it’s a good thing that I lost the gig,” she added, “because I was going to show up there and act all the way out.”

The same strategy of appeasement appears to be in play this year, which would account for the unusual choice  of a mentalist as host. The press organization, presumably under pressure from the same White House it’s supposed to cover, has thus gone beyond merely cancelling a comedian — no, this feels like a move to cancel comedy itself at its signature event.

There are a number of important things that happen during the event, including bestowing awards and scholarships to members of the media. And I don’t mean to blow my nose in the First-Amendment-inscribed pocket handkerchiefs that some attendees plan to wear to protest the administration’s anti-free speech policies, but I will say this: If you remove comedy from the WHCA Dinner, that leaves the high-profile entertainment up to a lot of HR-non-compliant afterparties and a mushroom cloud of Trump’s Victory 45-47 cologne.

My point is that the country needs Ruffin’s “acting all the way out.” America needs comedians to poke the powerful right in their grimacing faces. A liberal democracy that permits that sort of subversion makes itself stronger.

Since 1983, the WHCA dinner has deputized assorted clowns to preside over this quirky but vital ritual (only in 1999, 2003 and 2019 did an entertainer other than a comedian perform at the event).

Most WHCA comic headliners have executed their patriotic duties with verve and venom. Liberal or left-leaning stand-ups have lit up Republicans. Stephen Colbert in 2006 reminded America that George W. Bush “stands for things,” but also, “on things like aircraft carriers and rubble, and recently flooded city squares.” In 2017, Hasan Minhaj joked he did “not see” (which he pronounced as “Nazi”) Steve Bannon. A year later, Michelle Wolf referred to an absent Trump as “the one p—- you’re not allowed to grab.”

But liberal or left-leaning comedians are comedians first. As such, they’ve rarely missed an opportunity to dunk on Democrats as well. In 2013, Conan O’Brien taunted Barack Obama that he only won the presidency because Mitt Romney was his opponent. In 2016, Larry Wilmore made everyone in the room extremely uncomfortable by directing a racial slur at the nation’s first Black commander in chief. Roy Wood Jr. in 2023 reflected upon how odd it was that 80-year-old Joe Biden was begging for four more years of work.

I can think of one way to rebut the charge that WHCA is canceling comedy: Invite a humorist with RedState street cred to entertain at next year’s “nerd prom.” The right-wing comedy sector is booming. Many conservatives are devoted fans of stand-up and they have no shortage of skilled humorists to follow. Instead of a manosphere-adjacent mentalist like Pearlman, the WHCA should have platformed a manosphere-adjacent stand-up like Shane Gillis, Tony HinchcliffeAdam Carolla or countless other seasoned acts that could have easily played the gig.

All of these more conservative comedians, I surmise, are also comedians first. Had the WHCA invited them, Trump and his crew would have invariably been rinsed and roasted, patriotically. No one would have claimed that “liberal bias” motivated the barbs — have you ever listened to Hinchcliffe? Had WHCA simply done that, a weird and sloppy democratic tradition would have persevered. Life would go on, as it always does.

So would Trump’s wars, deportations, voter suppression schemes, corruption, lies and so forth. But the jokes would linger like funny prayers to ironic gods, permitting us to at least collectively recognize how absurd our predicament has become.

Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University.