Ron DeSantis: Trevor Noah ‘Lying’ About My Presence at White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Trevor Noah attends the TIME 100 Gala 2019 Lobby Arrivals at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Apr
Noam Galai/Getty Images for TIME
Joel B. Pollak

Comedian Trevor Noah took several potshots at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, claiming the governor was in the room — but he was not there.

Noah attempted several jokes at DeSantis’s expense:

One of my favorites, Ron DeSantis is here. Yeah, yeah. Oh man, I’m actually surprised that he found the time. He’s been so busy trying to outmaneuver Trump for 2024. I see you, Ron. I see you, player. Yeah. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing, blaming Trump for the lockdowns, distancing yourself from the vaccines that Trump created with his own two hands “Nobody knew how to make vaccines until I made them, beautiful, beautiful vaccines. Nobody know how, not even Fauci.” But Ron is playing it coy, man. He won’t even tell people if he got the booster. Or as they say in Florida, don’t ask, don’t tell. Am I right? I see you, Ron. You see, what I like about Ron DeSantis is if Trump was the original Terminator, DeSantis is the T-1000. You’re smarter than him. You’re slicker than him. You can walk down ramps. Because, you see, Trump said he won the election, but everyone was just able to look at the numbers and see that he was wrong. That’s why Ron DeSantis is one step ahead. First, you ban the math textbooks, then nobody knows how to count the votes. Boom, my man. Ha ha ha. What a room.

Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for the governor, took to social media over the weekend to insist that Noah was wrong:

The program apparently listed DeSantis in attendance, though Pushaw noted that he was not:

The reporter who published DeSantis’s name in the program admitted that he might not, in fact, have attended:

Pushaw repeated Monday that DeSantis had not attended:

Gov. DeSantis himself confirmed Monday in Tampa, Florida, that he was not at the dinner, and added that his office had, in fact, rejected the invitation. He accused Trevor Noah of “lying” about his presence at the event:

“The idea that I was there is false, the idea that I would have ever gone is false. … It just just shows you why that cabal of people in DC [and] New York is so reviled by so many Americans. I think it’s a reputation that’s been well deserved.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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