Trump makes bizarre twerking joke about shooting that threatened journalists’ lives

President Donald Trump tried to ease some of the awkward tension at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a joke about the shooting that disrupted the previous one in April.

Specifically, he made a joke about twerking, and Trinidadian rap star Nicky Minaj, who has emerged as one of Trump’s more prominent celebrity supporters.

“After hearing the gunshots, many people yelled, ‘get down, get down’ which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,” said the president.

The joke was met with a smattering of laughter from the crowd, many of whom were at the previous event and found their lives in danger from the shooting.

The dinner featured a prior awkward moment when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer gave an award to The Wall Street Journal for its reporting on Trump’s ties to deceased child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which Trump sued the paper over. As he listened to all this, Trump put on a show of good sport, shrugging for the crowd.