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Romney, Gingrich, GSA: Obama tweaks them all

WASHINGTON — This year’s primaries, the 2008 primaries, the General Services Administration scandal and even the Secret Service and Donald Trump were targets for President Barack Obama’s scattershot humor at Saturday night’s celebrity studded White House Correspondents Dinner.

Even the entrance to his speech was part of his schtick. The president walked off stage just before he took the podium with an alleged “hot mic,” making fun of getting caught last month on an open microphone with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

“What am I doing here,” he asks off stage. “I’m opening for Jimmy Kimmel and telling knock-knock jokes to Kim Kardashian.”

Once on stage, the president revisited last year’s dinner.

“Last year at this time, this very weekend, we finally delivered justice to one of the world’s most notorious individuals,” Obama said, a seeming reference to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Instead, a picture of Trump appeared on the room’s television monitors. Obama last year delivered a scathing roast of Donald Trump, the real estate mogul who flirted with running for the Republican nomination and claimed he has solved the “mystery” of Obama’s birth certificate.

He took a shot at the Republican congressional leadership, whom he thanked “for taking time from their exhausting schedule of not passing any laws” to attend the dinner.

Four years ago, he recalled, he was locked in a tough primary fight with Hillary Clinton, now his secretary of state. “She can’t stop drunk texting me from Cartagena,” he said, referring to their recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Columbia.

But Obama touched on serious themes as well, remembering The New York Times’ Anthony Shadid and Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London who died while covering the uprising in Syria.

“Never forget that our country depends on you to help protect our freedom, our democracy and our way of life,” Obama said.

President Barack Obama attends the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday in Washington. Associated Press
First lady Michelle Obama attends the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner headlined by late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel on Saturday in Washington. Associated Press
President Barack Obama high-fives late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel as Caren Bohan, a Reuters journalist and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association looks on, during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday in Washington. Associated Press
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