From a man who knows good comedy, Joe Piscopo on Newsmax praised the presentation at the White House Correspondents dinner, but panned the content and the partisan bias in the jokes aimed mostly at the right.
"The production of the whole thing was actually very, very well done," Piscopo told Monday's "Spicer & Co." "It was paced well and everything."
But Piscopo mocked the hypocrisy of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) giving the Katharine Graham award for courage.
"But don't give me: the Katharine Graham award for The Washington Post?" Piscopo told co-hosts Sean Spicer and Lyndsay Keith. "For what, the Russia hoax? Is that what they got it for? I mean, what else did they get it for? The Hunter Biden story? They didn't cover any of it. There's no freedom of speech, and they go down the way-left mantra of all woke cancel culture, and they're patting themselves on the back."
Piscopo blasted the WHCA for "trying to pull the wool over our eyes."
"But we can't be fooled," he continued.
"We're at war. There's a war. We're at the precipice of a nuclear war, of chemical weapons. I mean the inflation, people are coming into the border – they're placing them randomly around cities in the United States of America.
"This is the most chaos I've ever seen out of the White House, and they're patting each other on the back."
As much as White House handlers were "very, very smart" for putting President Joe Biden up there to crack jokes, it does not hide the realities for Americans, Piscopo added.
"We're not dumb anymore," he said. "We know this, and the fact that celebrating at this tenuous time just didn't sit well with my audience anyway."
But Piscopo did have praise for Biden fixing his bow tie by making it more crooked, whether it was a joke or not.
"I had to tell you they knew exactly what they were doing," Piscopo said. "It was very, very smart, and you've got to hand it to the White House because they've been mishandling this president forever. When he stepped up, it made him vulnerable. He was likable."
Piscopo lamented the negativity from the event, which is structured as a roast.
"What is with the roast mentality in comedy?" Piscopo asked. "Why can't we be nice? Why can't we just have fun?
"You know, you make fun of yourself a little bit. Why do we have to attack everybody? That's the mantra now, you know."
Biden should have played on the Oscars, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, and slapped comedian Trevor Noah, Piscopo cracked.
"It would be funny if I got up and actually slapped Noah," Piscopo said. "I thought that would have worked."
Note: See Newsmax TV now carried in more than 100 million U.S. homes, on DirecTV Ch. 349, Dish Network Ch. 216, Xfinity Ch. 1115, Spectrum, U-verse Ch. 1220, FiOS Ch. 615, Frontier Ch. 115, Optimum Ch. 102, Cox cable, Suddenlink Ch. 102, Mediacom Ch. 277, AT&T TV Ch 349, FUBO and major OTT platforms like Roku, YouTube, Xumo, Pluto and most smart TV's including Samsung+, Sony, LG, Vizio and more – Find All Systems that Carry Newsmax – Click Here
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.