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.

Laughs and an appreciation of Rick Moranis were plentiful as Amazon MGM’s Spaceballs: The New One, a sequel to the 1987 Mel Brooks Star Wars parody, flew into San Diego Comic-Con’s cavernous Hall H Friday afternoon.

One of the panel’s biggest attractions was seeing Moranis, the comedian who appeared in seminal 1980s films such as Ghostbusters andHoney, I Shrunk the Kid, make his first ever appearance. The actor played villain Dark Helmet in the original 1987 movie but has been largely absent from movies and television for most of this century, so his return with the Spaceballs sequel is headline making.

After a “comb the audience” joke, a callback to a line in the original movie that revealed the comedian to be in the audience wearing an oversized Darth Vader-style helmer, Moranis hopped up the stage to a standing ovation and chants of “Rick! Rick! Rick!”

“You made our childhoods better,” said Kevin Smith, who ably moderated the panel.

Moranis sat between Josh Gad, one of the creative forces behind the sequel, and Daphne Zuniga, who played Princess Vespa in the original and returns for the sequel. Also on stage were director Josh Greenbaum, actors Keke Palmer and Lewis Pullman, and writers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit.

Gad described the origins of the sequel, recounting how he had been working on a Honey I Shrunk the Kids sequel with Moranis that ultimately fell apart, but did end up watching Moranis movies with his daughter.

“We finished it and she goes, ‘Can we watch part 2?’” he said. “And I said, ‘There is no part 2.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, the weird little alien guy said there was going to be a part 2.’”

When he replied, “Oh sweetie, that is called a joke,” she countered, “Well, why isn’t there a part 2?”

That night, Gad said, he had a dream about the sequel and soon after was pitching Brooks and his producing partner. He threw in ideas refencing new Star Wars movies and characters such as The Force Awakens and Kylo Ren.

Imitating Brooks, Gad summed up his reaction: “Josh, it sounds like you’ve really got your finger on the pulse. I don’t know half of what you’re talking about, but I really like it.”

The comedic presence of Brooks, who appeared only by a recorded video early on in the panel where he thanked the nerds for keeping his movie alive close to 40 years, loomed large over Hall H. Amazon MGM bucked the Comic-Con trend by not having a trailer debut or showing any clips from the movie, but it did show videos of Brooks reuniting with Moranis, reuniting with original star Bill Pullman and Zuniga, and recording lines in a booth while praising — or not — the script.

Greenbaum recounted meeting the comedy legend early on in the movie’s development, and when it was approaching time to being principal photography, he asked if the man had any words of advice.

Brooks paused, and said yes. Greenbaum was thrilled. He leaned in.

“Don’t say ‘Cut!’ first. It’s ‘Action!,’ and then ‘Cut!’” Brooks told him.

The young director’s takeaway? “It was, don’t take this too seriously and go out there and have fun,” Greenbaum summed up.

The new movie, Gad said, takes a look at the state of movies and nostalgia.

“The industry it was parodying is a very different industry than this one 40 years later,” said Gad. “We all sort of talked thematically about this word ‘nostalgia.’ And we love movies that look back. We love sequels. We love continuing these stories we grew up with. We analyzed why that is and we thought Spaceballs was the perfect vehicle to catch us up with everything that’s happened in filmdom and in fan filmdom.

Interjected Smith, “When they made the first one, there was a trilogy to make fun of. Now there’s a never-ending fount.”

“We really wanted to dive into that,” Gad replied.

The panel also featured a funny bit where Lewis Pullman read out a letter purportedly written by his father, Bill Pullman, about how great it was to be part of a family, while ignoring his own father-son relationship. And it also showed, on multiple screens, the purported plans of a Spaceballs cinematic universe, sketched out in decade-spanning movie “phases,” a shot at how Marvel Studios has unveiled timeline of its various movie plans.