The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner traditionally is where liberal comedians skewer conservative politicians. Liberal journalists usually laugh. This year was different, Matthew Hennesssey explains in the WSJ.

Before the shooting started, the expectation was for President Donald Trump to turn the tables on attendees during his first White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised it would be funny, definitely entertaining. Some expected Trump to treat the evening “like the vanquishing of an opponent.”

Alas, notes Mr. Hennessey, “ ’twas not to be.”

That particular speech is unlikely ever to be given. The good guys with the guns stopped it from proceeding.

At this juncture, Mr. Hennessey steps back, and readers are asked to do the same. Imagine how a dispassionate historian of the future would look up this “dramedy.”

Trump comes out of nowhere (Queens is a nowhere part of NY City), although, unlike most of us, he’s got a rich daddy. Donald “was given a small fortune and he grew it into a big one” before he “hustled himself into a position as the premier nouveau riche real-estate man in the world’s most dynamic city.”

Trump, Flat-Out Busted

Donald became famous because he was rich. Then he lost it all. But wait. Here he comes again. Famous again. And richer still.

In 2011, Trump decided to show them, to make them regret laughing at him.

A Hero’s Journey

In 2015, he ran again, “against a large field of seasoned professionals, who called him crass, crude, dumb. They said he was unfit, unsound, un-American, and just plain un.

Next he took down a powerful politician who was the candidate of destiny. Hillary Clinton was herself the main character in a different type of hero’s journey.

History is contingent. Nothing is written. She lost. He won. Here we are.

What did Trump’s victory incite? Confusion and rage.

The elites he had defeated refused to accept him as the nation’s leader.
They hounded him. They conspired to jam him up on false charges of collusion with a foreign power. They impeached him. Twice.

Nevertheless, he persisted.

He vowed to come back. His enemies resolved not to allow it. They also acted stupidly, throwing the book at him in the courts, lying to the people about his successor’s mental fitness, doing what they could to smear him, to rule him out. Again they called him crass, crude, un-American, unfit.

Others raged against him. Assassins tried to kill him. Maybe thrice, maybe more.

Yet the people lifted him up again. Not the good and the great people. The low and dirty ones, the rabble. The forgotten men and women. They flocked to him as the pointy-heads gasped in horror. The hoi-polloi put him back in the highest office in the land. He holds it still.

No one knows where the journey ends. We’re in the thick of it. Hubris takes care of most heroes during their lifetimes. The hated—and Mr. Trump qualifies—must then survive the verdict of history, which is often delivered by the pointy-heads. The jury will undoubtedly be out for a long, long time.

You have to admit. It’s a hell of a story.