Attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner can expect the night’s entertainer, Larry Wilmore, to crack a number of jokes about racial justice during his stand-up routine Saturday night.
Comedy Central’s late-night TV host admitted Thursday that race, as well as election news, will make up the majority of his content in the annual gathering of Oval Office reporters and Hollywood tag-alongs.
“I’ll definitely bring up race, that’s going to be an issue in a lot of different ways. I will bring up the presidential election — lot of things to talk about there. We’ll talk about some people in the room, talk about Obama’s legacy a little bit,” Wilmore said on C-SPAN.
The African-American comedian added he was honored to have the opportunity to be part of the President Obama’s final press corps dinner.
“When I think this is the first black president, we’re the same age for goodness sake. To see even where race has gone in our lifetime. When I was a kid the thought of a black man even leading a football team, being the quarterback, was a huge deal, let alone to be president,” Wilmore said.
It will be Wilmore’s first gig for the White House Correspondents’ Association though he performed at the Congressional Correspondents Dinner in 2011. He and his team have spent the past month preparing his routine, which Wilmore said must make the president laugh above all others.
“Regardless of the reaction that you get, you have to pretend as if you’re destroying, like you’re killing,” Wilmore said. “You just want to check and see if the president is laughing. That’s the most important thing. If he’s laughing, you’re doing OK.”
C-SPAN will air the dinner starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
