Hasan Minhaj (Daily Show) to headline White House correspondents’ dinner

WASHINGTON — "Daily Show" correspondent Hasan Minhaj will perform at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner this month, taking on the traditional role of cracking jokes about the president and the fourth estate for a black-tie-clad crowd stuffed into the Washington Hilton.

Association president Jeff Mason said the choice of Minhaj, whose comedy is often laced with social and political satire, underscored the dinner's more serious tone this year, with President Donald Trump and his aides skipping the dinner and the usual crowd of Hollywood imports staying home.

"We were not looking for someone to roast the president in absentia – that's not fair and it's not the message we want to get across," Mason said during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday. Mason said he thought the comic would entertain, but also "speak to" the dinner's themes of celebrating the first amendment and journalism. "I'm confident he'll be able to ... strike the right balance."

It won't be Minhaj's first Washington rodeo. Last year, his performance at the Radio and TV Correspondents Association's annual dinner drew laughs – and headlines. He ripped Congress for inaction on gun laws and the outsize influence of the NRA in an unusually biting monologue. (He also called Trump a "racist Cheeto.")

"I'm not there to try to skewer people," Minhaj has said. "I'm just trying to come at it with some human empathy. I consider myself to be an angry optimist."