NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is trading the rally stage for comedy Thursday night as he headlines the annual Al Smith charity dinner, where he was jeered eight years ago while delivering an especially pointed speech.
Vice President Kamala Harris is skipping attending the event in person as she campaigns in battleground states, breaking with presidential tradition. But she will appear on screen in a recorded video, organizers said.
The white tie dinner in New York raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade light-hearted barbs and show that they can get along — or at least pretend to — for one night in the election’s final stretch.
It’s often the last time the two nominees share a stage before Election Day.
Trump is being joined at the dinner by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail.
The dais includes a mix of Trump allies and foes. Also sitting onstage is New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against him and his business. New York’s embattled mayor, Eric Adams, other top city officials, business leaders and sports and media personalities are also in attendance. Adams was charged last month with accepting illegal campaign contributions and lavish overseas trips from Turkish officials and businesspeople. Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was booed when he was announced.
Two members of Trump’s transition team — Robert F. Kennedy, who is attending with his wife, Cheryl Hines, and Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald — are also onstage.
The dinner is being emceed by comedian Jim Gaffigan, who has a history of criticizing Trump.
In 2020, he wrote on X, then known as Twitter: “We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.”
Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on her plans, but her team had previously said that they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in battleground states that will decide the election, rather than detouring to heavily Democratic New York. Her team has told organizers that she would be willing to attend as president if she wins.
The Daily Caller was first to report that Harris would address the dinner by screen.
Trump had blasted Harris for declining to attend, accusing her in a social media post of being anti-Catholic. “Any Catholic that votes for Comrade Kamala Harris should have their head examined,” he wrote.
That was the kind of tone that drew boos in 2016 when Trump appeared at the dinner with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and unleashed a particularly nasty speech, calling her “corrupt” and accusing her of “pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Trump’s 2016 speech, delivered the night after their final debate, had begun on a less hostile tone.
Trump joked that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., used to love him when he when he was a Democrat. After noting that these kinds of dinner remarks typically begin with a self-deprecating joke, he quipped that he was “actually a modest person.”
One of his best lines of the night came at the expense of his wife as he complained that the media was biased against him.
“You want the proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it — it’s fantastic. They think she’s absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech and people get on her case,” he joked in a reference to her convention speech that year, parts of which had been plagiarized.
But Trump’s remarks soon veered into bitterness as he turned to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state and he praised “the wonder of WikiLeaks” for its revelations.
“Hillary believes that it’s vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private,” he said to jeers. “For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Clinton also offered her share of personal digs, noting that the Statue of Liberty, for most Americans, represents a symbol of hope for immigrants.
“Donald looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a ‘4,’” Clinton joked. “Maybe a ‘5’ if she loses the torch and tablet and changes her hair.”
Trump’s sense of humor is often cited by his supporters as key to his appeal. While he infamously glowered through former President Obama’s jokes at his expense during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, he also sometimes pokes fun at himself.
At several rallies this year, he has remarked on his hair after catching a glimpse of himself on screen.
“What the hell can you do. There’s nothing I can do about it. We’re stuck with it,” he joked at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania last month.
Both Trump and President Joe Biden, who is Catholic, spoke at a virtual version of the fundraiser in 2020, which was moved online due to concerns over large gatherings at the height of the pandemic. Both candidates used their speeches not to tell jokes, but to appeal to Catholic voters, with Biden speaking about how his faith had guided him through moments of tragedy and Trump emphasizing his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who plays a prominent role in the dinner, offered a message to both men about the upcoming election. “I also dare remind them that Al Smith was a happy warrior, that he was never a sore loser,” he said.
The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner is named for the former New York governor, a Democrat who was the first Catholic to receive a major party nomination for president when he unsuccessfully ran for the White House in 1928.
The event has become a tradition for presidential candidates since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together in 1960. In 1996, the Archdiocese of New York decided not to invite then-President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger, Bob Dole, reportedly because Clinton vetoed a late-term abortion ban.
