Samantha Bee prepping her rival correspondents’ gala

TORONTO As the White House Correspondents Association dinner takes place sans U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday, non-attendees will have another gala option — complete with T-shirt cannons and fiery political commentary.

The late-night news satire show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” will hold the “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” gala in Washington, D.C., at the same time as the official correspondents event.

The Toronto native’s show will be taped and air later that night on The Comedy Network.

“We’re the sister event, I would say, to the other dinner,” said Allana Harkin, a Canadian co-producer and correspondent on “Full Frontal.”

“Every penny that we raise from that evening still goes to the Committee to Protect Journalists .... The reason why we're doing it is, as you may have heard, the president of the United States doesn’t love journalists. We didn’t know how much that event was going to be supported, so we wanted to make sure that we had an event that night that was really in celebration of all the journalists that we admire and we respect and whose work we actually use all the time.”

Harkin said their event expects to lure in about 2,000 attendees, including “Veep” cast members and “lots of amazing journalists.” It will include “a very special cold open,” pretaped field pieces and will be “in the same spirit” as the weekly show.

“There was an email that went out ... it said, ‘Is it possible to get extra T-shirt guns for the night?’” she said with a laugh.

Given the constant stream of news flowing from Trump and his administration these days, Harkin expected they would be shaping the content of the dinner “up until the last minute.”

Trump turned down his invitation to the official correspondents' dinner in February. He now plans to hold a rally in Pennsylvania on the same night to mark his 100th day in office.