Trump Attends Al Smith Benefit Dinner With His Wife, Melania, While Harris Appears Virtually

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is trading the rally stage for comedy Thursday night as he headlines Al Smith’s annual benefit dinner, where he was booed eight years ago while giving a speech especially blunt.

Vice President Kamala Harris did not attend the event in person while campaigning in Wisconsin, breaking with presidential tradition. But she will appear on screen in a recorded video, organizers said.

The New York gala raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and traditionally offers candidates from both parties the opportunity to trade light-hearted barbs, poke fun at themselves and show they can get along – or at least pretend they can. -. for one night in the final stretch of the elections.

It’s often the last time the two nominees share the stage before Election Day.

Trump is 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 enemies. Joining him on stage is New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against Trump and his company. New York’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials, as well as business leaders and sports and media figures, will also be in attendance. Adams was accused last month of accepting illegal campaign contributions and lavish foreign trips from Turkish officials and businesspeople. Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was booed when it was announced.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who supported Trump after dropping his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, will attend with his wife, Cheryl Hines. New York magazine has placed one of its top correspondents on leave after she acknowledged having a personal relationship with a former reporter who several media outlets identified as Kennedy.

The dinner will be hosted 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 out for the crook and thief that he is.”

Harris’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment on her plans, but her team had previously said that with less than three weeks until Election Day, they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in battleground states that will decide the election. election. , instead of veering towards a strongly democratic New York. Her team told organizers that she would be willing to attend the dinner as president if she won. The Daily Caller was first to report that Harris would address the dinner via screen.

Harris’ decision not to attend drew some boos from the crowd when organizers took notice. Trump received a mixed reception.

Trump criticized Harris for refusing to attend, accusing her in a social media post of being anti-Catholic. “Any Catholic voting 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 a dinner with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and gave a particularly nasty speech, calling her “corrupt” and accusing her of “pretending not to hate the Catholics.”

Trump’s 2016 speech, delivered the night after the final debate, began with a less hostile tone.

Trump joked that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., used to love him when he was a Democrat. After noting that these kinds of dinner comments often start with a self-deprecating joke, he joked that he was “actually a modest person.”

One of his best lines of the night came at his wife’s expense when he complained that the media was biased against him.

“Do you want proof? Michelle Obama gives a speech and everyone loves it – it’s fantastic. They think she is absolutely great. My wife, Melania, gives the exact same speech and people defend her,” he joked, referring to her convention speech that year, parts of which were plagiarized.

But Trump’s remarks quickly turned to bitterness when he turned to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state and praised “the wonder of WikiLeaks” for its revelations.

“Hillary believes it is vital to deceive people by having a totally different public policy and a completely different private policy,” he said amid 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 her flashlight and tablet and changes her hair.”

Mary Callahan Erdoes, vice president of the foundation, alluded to the reception when introducing Trump.

“You never disappoint. Your intelligence is absolutely fabulous. And all of us together will hope for the best”, she joked, laughing.

Trump’s sense of humor is often cited by his supporters as fundamental to his appeal. Although he criticized 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 commented on his hair after seeing himself on screen.

“What the hell can you do? There’s nothing I can do about it. We’re stuck with this,” 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 2020 fundraiser, which was moved online due to concerns about 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 talking about how his faith guided him in times of tragedy and Trump highlighting the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who plays a prominent role at the dinner, left a message for the two men about the upcoming elections. “I also dare remind you that Al Smith was a happy warrior, who was never a sore loser,” he said.

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner is named after the former governor of New York, a Democrat who was the first Catholic to receive a major party nomination for president when he ran unsuccessfully 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 opponent, Bob Dole, reportedly because Clinton vetoed the ban on late-term abortion.