Speaking at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Friday, Donald Trump delivered an hour-long speech blending shopworn rally material with a string of leaden one-liners.

He was making his first appearance as president at the dinner, which had to be rescheduled last Aprtil after a shooter attempted to rush the ballroom and was subdued by the Secret Service. While presidents for decades have long used the event’s keynote slot to zing reporters to varying degrees, Trump lapsed into rally mode, only deviating for some personal broadsides at members of the press, marbled with references to their appearance.

After one quip about an elderly U.S. senator’s sex life drew crickets, Trump asked, “Does anybody get that? I thought that was actually great. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole frickin’ stupid speech. It was the only good one, and that went down with not exactly great laughter.”

Over the rest of the meandering speech (watch the whole thing below), Trump seemed to recognize that many of his would-be jokes were not landing. There were few laughs or reactions at all beyond squirming or fidgeting as he veered in stream-of-consciousness fashion from topic to topic.

“Tonight’s event is even crazier than the last time,” Trump said. “It’s so successful that I’ve been informed by CBS News’s David Ellison” (Ellison is CEO of CBS parent Paramount) that “next year, they’re going to call it the Trump White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” Changing the name, he added, “is the only way you’re going to get me back here.”

The hour-long speech tested the patience of all but the fiercest Trump loyalists in attendance. The audience only sporadically showed a notable reaction, with long periods of near-silence prevailing. Once Trump’s remarks concluded and mentalist Oz Pearlman took the stage, hundreds of guests streamed toward the exits.

Compared with April’s event at the Hilton, the ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria is much smaller. Trump cabinet members mingled with reporters in an aisle near one of Paramount’s tables. Among those sitting at a table with Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim were cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy Jr., as well as presidential advisor Stephen Miller as well as Katie Miller and Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines.

Prior to Trump’s remarks, there were some awkward moments onstage as annual awards were given out, including to some journalists behind investigations of the president. As Wall Street Journal reporters accepted an honor for their Jeffrey Epstein story, Trump shook their hands and then threw his hands up in the air and smiled a bit. Wolf Blitzer, who was presenting the award, noted that he sued the WSJ over the story for $20 billion.

Once he took the lectern, Trump went after Josh Dawsey, one of the WSJ winners, and CNN host Kaitlyn Collins with highly personal digs, but the room fell nearly silent as the would-be laugh lines were delivered. Weijia Jiang, outgoing president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, was stone-faced as Trump went into the roast-like remarks.

Trump had been scheduled to deliver remarks at the April dinner, but it was interrupted and then ended after a gunman breached a security barricade. The incident took place just outside the Washington Hilton ballroom, but shots could be heard among dinner guests. That sent the Secret Service scrambling to remove Trump and Vice President JD Vance from the dais, as well as other guests seated in the ballroom

Trump urged the White House Correspondents’ Association to reschedule, but the new arrangements were for a new venue at the Waldorf, formerly a Trump hotel, and with a new set of security measures in place.

But just as in April, there has been attention on the WHCA and what would be said during the evening, not just by Trump but by other journalists. In addition to a flurry of lawsuits against media outlets and routine rants about the news media, Trump has threatened to pull network broadcast licenses and his Justice Department has subpoenaed reporters to try to obtain their sources. In the latter case, the DOJ this week withdrew subpoenas issued to New York Times reporters who wrote pieces on the lack of security features on the new Air Force One. That followed a court hearing in which a federal judge criticized government attorneys for the way that the subpoenas were issued.

The president skipped the WHCA dinners last year and during his first term, at times holding counter events. But he agreed to attend this year, putting him front and center at an event celebrating some of the journalists he has attacked. Among those receiving awards were reporters for The Wall Street Journal who reported on a bawdy letter with Trump’s signature sent to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump denied he sent the letter, and sued the publication, along with its publisher and Rupert Murdoch.

Dade Hayes contributed to this report.

Just like the beginning of the original Spaceballs, which went really big in that long opening spaceship take that made fun of Star Wars, so did Amazon MGM Studios in its Hall H presentation of Spaceballs: The New One. Ala the studio’s presentation of Project Hail Mary last year, they blew the 180-degree wrap around screens open wide for the new Mel Brooks production in what was the ultimate Comic-Con parody: A hysterical send-up of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s phase timeline from their 2019 and 2022 presentations.

The screens displayed several phases of Spaceballs through eleven phases including musicals and unidentified release dates. Genius.

“We’d make a really weird Blade,” Gad joked later on during the panel in response to an audience’s question, “But maybe it would finally get made.”

At first, returning star, Rick Moranis aka Dark Helmet could not be found, until the camera found him disguised in a group of fans wearing Darth helmets. The former McKenzie Brother stood up and received a big standing ovation.

“Rick is underselling it,” the sequel’s writer, producer and star Josh Gad joked. “They’re announcing him as part of the X-Men cast tomorrow.”

Gad shouted out Moranis as “one of the four men on my comedy Mount Rushmore. Another one of them is John Candy. This movie is really a love letter to him. I am not playing Barf in this movie. I am playing ew mog/mug in our movie. John is at the beating heart of this film and the reason why this movie has so much heart. I hope when you see it you will agree.”

The 100-year old Brooks beamed in with a message, “Sorry I can’t be with you. I’m on the convention floor trying to buy a rare Charizard card. When I was your age, on a Friday, I would go to something called work,” he joked, “From the bottom of my heart I wanna say, thank you, nerds.” Brooks returns as the almighty Yogurt in part two.

Bill Pullman as well (aka Lone Starr in the film, the Han Solo cut-up) beamed in, saying he was “tracking down a rare Charizard card in the UK.” However, Pullman’s son Lewis Pullman who plays his on-screen son Starburst in the movie, was presence and called his dad’s work “unfillable”.

Lewis Pullman shared his least favorite scene in the original Spaceballs, “when Barf knocks my dad’s cowboy hat off. I remember being too young to understand that the hat didn’t just fall into the abyss of space. This whole movie’s about him trying to get his damn hat back.”

“For a while I had real beef with Barf,” added the young Pullman.  

Brooks’ sense of humor is historically very politically incorrect, read Blazing Saddles, so how does that get by in this fierce Trumpian era? Will Spaceballs 2 avoid controversy? “It’s all about the laughs’, Mel always said,” according to the sequel’s director Josh Greenbaum.

Added Moranis, “There’s room in a Mel Brooks movie for the smartest joke you’ve ever thought of and the dumbest one.”

The clip shown in the room today was longer than one at CinemaCon which showed Brooks as Yogurt, Kiki Palmer and Lewis Pullman’s characters on the adventure, Daphne Zuniga as Princess Vespa, culminating with an Avatar Na’vi entering the men’s room and taking to the urinal. The trailer won’t be releasing today, we understand.

Spaceballs: The New One blasts off on April 23.