Live updates: White House correspondents’ dinner 2016

Well, that was an interesting dinner.

President Obama waves after speaking at the dinner. From left: comedian Larry Wilmore, first lady Michelle Obama and Jerry Seib of The Wall Street Journal. (Susan Walsh/AP)

President Obama’s eighth and final comedic speech for the annual gathering of the White House Correspondents’ Association was heavy on end-of-term self-deprecation (“Hillary once questioned whether I’d be awake for the 3 a.m. phone call: Now I’m awake anyway cause I have to go to the bathroom”) and heavier on jokes about an absence Donald Trump (“is this dinner too tacky for The Donald?”) — though he seemed to hold back just a bit in a seemingly uneasy room.

We’ll be analyzing this speech for a while. Perhaps not the finest of his well-regarded comic riffs — but his bit with an in-on-the-joke John Boehner will be remembered as a highlight of bipartisan cooperation.

Read more in Paul Farhi’s story of the evening: For Obama’s final correspondents’ dinner, the obvious targets: Trump, Cruz and himself

Who knows how history will regard the routine by Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore. By some accounts from within the room, he was dying up there; big segments of the audience recoiled from his withering slams on Wolf Blitzer, Brian Williams and the president’s drone warfare strategy.

We have completed our live coverage of the event, but please scroll down for more presidential humor, celebrity sightings, red carpet fashion and other odd encounters.

Also:

How Helen Mirren won the White House correspondents’ dinner — before it even started

The details on Michelle Obama’s WHCD dress

The night the White House upstaged White House correspondents’ weekend

“In less than a year, you’ll be playing golf every day, so things won’t be that different,” Wilmore says of Obama’s final year in office.

He tells Obama to not leave behind anything in the White House, or the next president moving in will be confused: “What’s cocoa butter?”

“When it’s all said and done, after eight years in the White House, we are really going to miss Michelle,” he added.

Larry Wilmore finally brought up the very persistent Internet conspiracy theory asserting that Ted Cruz, a man who wants to be president, is the Zodiac Killer.

The Post’s own Philip Bump has done the important work of debunking this theory, in part because Ted Cruz was about two years old during the Zodiac Killer’s period of activity.

[The definitive debunking: Ted Cruz is not the Zodiac Killer]

“He’s smart, but it seems unlikely that he could develop a three-part cipher and send it to various California newspapers before he was potty-trained,” Bump writes.

“I can’t understand why everyone treats Donald Trump with kid gloves, and then I realize they’re the only gloves that’ll fit his stupid little baby hands.”

Wilmore adds, “Even O.J. Simpson said, ‘That guy is just hard to like.'”

There’s a rumor going around the Internet that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. “That’s absurd,” Willmore says. “Some people actually liked the Zodiac Killer.”

Wilmore takes on Bernie Sanders’s age: “Bernie’s so old when God said ‘Let there be light’ Bernie said, ‘Conserve energy, let’s sit in the dark.”

Then he pivoted back to Hillary Clinton, saying she’s had awkward run-ins with Black Lives Matter: “You know it’s bad when her response is ‘Can’t we talk about Benghazi? Please?’ “

The crowd is pretttttty tense about Wilmore’s series of burns against many of the media organizations and personalities in the room. One of them, CNN’s Don Lemon, was caught on camera responding to a joke about him with a rude gesture.

“2016 has been a beast. We lost David Bowie, Merle Haggard, Prince,” Wilmore starts. “Or as Hillary Clinton calls it ‘my favorite singer, my favorite singer, my favorite singer.’ ”

There are few laughs. Wilmore shrugs it off.

Wilmore’s targets: C-SPAN (“C-SPAN is the number one network among people who died watching TV and no one’s found them yet.”) and CNN’s countdown clock: “Now we can see exactly when they hit zero in the ratings.”

Meanwhile, he says, MSNBC stands for “Missing a Significant Number of Black Correspondents.”

Wilmore asks who Obama’s killing tonight, since Osama bin Laden was killed the weekend of the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner. The punchline is, of course, newspapers: “Can’t be print journalism, that industry’s been dead for a while now!”

“Your hair is so white it tried to punch me at a Trump rally,” Wilmore says. “You came in here looking like Denzel, you go out looking like Grady from ‘Sanford & Son.’ I know it’s a dated reference, but you’re dated, Mr. President!”

“I am a black man, who replaced a white man, who pretended to be a TV newscaster,” Larry Wilmore said. He then added, referring to the man who replaced Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, “‘Lester Holt and I have a lot in common.”

“Speaking of drones, how is Wolf Biltzer still on television?” Wilmore says. He projects a winner of the night: “Anyone who isn’t watching ‘The Situation Room.'”

Blitzer, to say the least, doesn’t look amused.

“Welcome to Negro Night,” Larry Wilmore starts. “Or as Fox News will report…’Two thugs disrupt elegant dinner in DC.'”

He jokes that next year’s event will be titled, “Donald Trump presents a luxurious meeting paid for by Mexico.”

“Obama out.”

Turning more serious, Obama spoke about several of the journalists in the room.

“A free press is why we once again honor Jason Rezaian.” Obama said of The Washington Post journalist.

Noting Rezaian’s absence last year at this event – he was still being held in solitary confinement in Iran – Obama said, “This year, we see that courage in the flesh.” Obama vowed to continue to use his office, as long as he’s president to work to free journalists who are held against their will.

“—- you, Chuck Todd,” Obama said in a pre-taped video joking about his decision to stay in Washington, D.C., so that his youngest kid can finish school after he leaves office. The line came at the end of a montage of TV reporters making jokes about the decision.

The video also contains something of a tradition for Obama’s sense of humor — a couple of birther jokes as Obama goes to the DMV to get a driver’s license again.

Obama also watches “Toy Story” with former House speaker John Boehner, who gives him advice. “You can just be you for awhile,” Boehner advises.

“Yesterday, I had a beer at 11:30 in the morning,” Boehner adds. He also tempts the president with a cigarette.

Obama’s light on the Trump jokes until the very end — then he went all in.

“The Republican establishment is incredulous that he is their most likely nominee,” Obama said, taking a jab at his Miss Universe years. “They say he lacks foreign-policy experience to be president. In fairness, he has spent years meeting with leaders from around the world: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan….”

Obama then directed his comments toward the media: “I think we can all agree that, from the start, he has gotten the appropriate amount of coverage befitting the seriousness of the his candidacy.” (Cue much laughter.) “I hope you are all proud of yourselves.”

Obama jokingly suggested that Donald Trump, who was not attending tonight’s dinner, was home “eating Trump Steaks, tweeting insults to Angela Merkel.”

He wondered why The Donald wouldn’t want to attend the glitzy affair, because “we had so much fun last time.”

“And then there’s Ted Cruz. Ted had a tough week,” Obama said. “Stood on a basketball court. Called the hoop a basketball ring.”

Obama offered a couple of other words in Cruz’s lexicon: “Baseball sticks. Football hats.”

“But sure, I’m the foreign one.”

(Courtesy of Fred Ryan)

From left, Jason Rezaian, the Tehran correspondent for The Washington Post who was freed in January after 18 months of imprisonment in Iran, Rezaian’s wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and Vice President Joe Biden.

“‘Feel the Bern.’ That’s a good slogan,” Obama said. “Hillary’s slogan has not had the same effect,” he said, showing a graphic of the Clinton logo pushing a giant boulder up a mountain emblazoned with the phrase, “Trudge up the Hill.”

Obama also compared Clinton’s campaign to, basically, an old person using Facebook. “Did you get my poke?”

Obama while talking about former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg: He’s “actually worth the amount of money he says he is.”

“We’ve got the bright new face of the Democratic party here tonight,” Obama said, “Mr. Bernie Sanders!”

“Bernie, you look like a million bucks!” Obama said. “Or 37,000 donations of $27 each.”

“I understand the news business is tough these days,” Obama said after prefacing the joke with a note that it was “maybe a cheap shot.”

This is the joke: “Every year somebody makes a joke about Buzzfeed changing the media landscape, and every year The Washington Post laughs a little less hard.”

…and hard-working journalists like Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo. He called “Spotlight,” with all its resources for investigative journalists, the “best fantasy film since ‘Star Wars.'”

“The last time I was this high, I was trying to decide on my major,” Obama said after referring to his “rising poll numbers” for approval.

“Congressional Republicans have been saying there are things I cannot do in my final year,” Obama said. “Unfortunately, this dinner was not one of them.”

The president then joked that, because a couple of Republicans in Congress were at the dinner, he should just lock the doors and hold Merrick Garland’s confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court right now.

“It’s like the Red Wedding,” he said, referring to a notoriously bloody scene from the “Game of Thrones” series.

“I know I was a little late tonight,” Obama told the crowd. “I was running on CPT. Which stands for ‘jokes that white people should not make.'”

“Next year this time someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be,” Obama quipped.

“But standing here, I can’t help but be reflective, and a little sentimental.” he said. “Eight years ago I said it was time to change the tone of our politics. In hindsight, I should have been more specific.”

“Hillary once questioned whether I’d be awake for the 3 a.m. phone call: Now I’m awake anyway cause I have to go to the bathroom.”

“…it’s anyone’s guess who she will be.”

“You can’t say it, but you know it’s true,” Obama says, as he walks up to a song playing the lyrics, “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

“You all look great,” Obama said. “The end of the Republic has never looked better.”

As a present to Obama, the White House Correspondents’ Association put together a blooper reel of Obama’s time in office with some of his more awkward moments including:

* Repeatedly calling Matt Lauer “Tim”
* Caught on a microphone calling Kanye West “a jackass” for his VMA crashing
* That time he wore mom jeans
* Many instances of tripping on stairs
* Mixing up “Sioux City” with “Sioux Falls”
* Saying he had been to all 57 states
* Misspelling “respect”
* His verbal tic of “let me be clear”

The White House Correspondents’ Association awarded 18 scholarships this year:

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

Rushawn A. Walters of Springfield, Mass.

Jazmin Goodwin of Columbia, S.C.

Miesha Miller of Hyattsville, Md.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, MEDILL SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

Jasmine Ellis of Audubon, Penn.

Emiliana Molina of Medellin, Colombia

Misha Euceph of Rawalpindi, Pakistan

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Ilgin Yorulmaz of Istanbul, Turkey

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, COLUMBIA

Joshua Benson of St. Louis, Mo.

Shih-Wei Chou of Taipei, Taiwan

Karol Ilagan of Maragondon, Cavite, Philippines

Andrew Kreighbaum of Dallas, Tex.

Li Lin of Shanghai, China

Moqiu Ma of Suzhou, China

Caleb O’Brien of Columbia, Mo.

Yizhu Wang of Shanghai, China

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

Juan Marcos Martinez Chacon of Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK

Miles Moore of Atlanta, Ga.

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Nana Agyemang of Accra, Ghana

You can read more about them here. 

Jason Rezaian, the Tehran correspondent for The Washington Post who was freed in January after 18 months of imprisonment in Iran, took to the lectern to give out the evening’s major awards.

“This is a big and intimidating room,” he said,  “but I can say that it beats solitary confinement.”

In a short, off-script moment, Rezaian thanked the other journalists in the crowd for their support during his confinement. “You guys have been incredible throughout my ordeal.”

[Freeing a reporter: Secret diplomatic talks and private back channels]

Huge applause from the crowd for Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned in Iran for 18 months before he was released in January. White House Correspondents’ Association president Carol Lee calls out everyone who helped make the release happen: “Thanks to efforts by the president, Secretary Kerry, Jason’s colleagues at the Washington Post, his family, particularly his brother Ali…Jason is free.”

Lee talks about other journalists under threat worldwide just for doing their jobs. She points out the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team, who reported on a decade of abuse by the Catholic Church.

Carol Lee of the Wall Street Journal (and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association) approached the lectern with Michelle Obama to begin awarding the WHCA’s scholarships. Finally! Something happened.

Except, it seemed that the dinner guests were still milling around, so Lee and Obama exchanged a bit of semi-awkward banter at the microphone while they waited for people to sit down.

“You all are making the first lady wait,” Lee chided.

Yes, Larry Wilmore has to give the speech of a lifetime in about an hour, but he doesn’t have to look so sad. Can’t he strike up a conversation with Michelle?

Kendall Jenner attends the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. (Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

People magazine snagged some time with “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star and supermodel Kendall Jenner, who said she was “starstruck” by meeting the president. The following conversation occurred, according to the magazine:

“He was like, ‘Say hi to Kim and Kanye,'” Jenner said. “I was like ‘Okay.'”

Here’s what the president (and others) are eating.

(Emily Heil/The Washington Post)

“There’s nothing left. . . but to get drunk.”

So said Franklin Pierce, when asked about the president’s duties after leaving office. But wait, there’s more: we’ve rounded up the best single joke told by each U.S. president — from Obama all the way back to Washington — for your reading pleasure.

[The single best joke told by every president, from Obama to Washington]

Here are a few other highlights from that roundup:

• James Buchanan, to his liquor merchants regarding their small bottles of bubbly: “Pints are very inconvenient in this house, as [champagne] is not used in such small quantities.”
• George H.W. Bush, at the 1989 Gridiron Club dinner: “People say I’m indecisive, but I don’t know about that.”
• James Madison, on his death bed: “I always talk better lying down.”

Meanwhile, we continue to watch the riveting spectacle of a bunch of people eating dinner. Yay!

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott hasn’t sat down the entire time.

Unlikely fanboy: Luke Russert approaches Josh Ostrovsky, a.k.a. the Fat Jew. He asks for a picture. “I never do this,” Russert says. “This is the only one I’ll ask for all night.”

Ostrovsky, a guest of the Huffington Post, is wearing what look like tux pants, with a patch-laden jean jacket, no tie and a ponytail poking straight up that he calls a “hair-rection.” “Basically, I’m here to class down the place,” he quips.

Michelle Obama attends the 102nd White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

We’ll bring you some more angles as the photos come in.

We have now reached the point of the evening where, as a viewer, you’re just staring at people eating dinner. What better way to pass the time than guess what Obama is chatting about with a waiter serving wine (who was unfortunately cut out of the frame during this interaction)? The C-SPAN commentators delighted in this interaction.

President Obama chats with a Hilton waiter and White House Correspondents’ Association president Carol Lee.

C-SPAN offered another fun fact: There are 200 Hilton waiters working the event tonight.

Joe Biden is sitting at table 114 with John Kerry, Helen Mirren and others.

Joe Biden greets Gladys Knight with “I am the Pip!” She laughs. I have no idea what this means.

People are milling around the ballroom, looking like they have no intention of sitting down anytime soon, though Howie Long and his wife, who are guests of Fox, are among the few to actually take their seats.

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and Joanna Coles of Cosmopolitan are talking…

And Joe Biden is working the room!

Photo gallery:

Actress Carrie Fisher was hustling through the halls of the Washington Hilton at 7:55, trying to make it into dinner on time. One thing holding her back? Her French bulldog Gary, who was clad in a studded collar. Fisher apparently has a penchant for bringing the pup along to important events. The Hilton security looked totally perplexed about what to do, but by the time they looked up again, Fisher had run by on her way to the line. She stopped only to take a selfie with a very happy fan while Gary sniffed the hotel carpet.

Helena Andrews caught Carrie Fisher in the bathroom and confirmed Gary is a “service dog.” Fisher said he was a “medical alert dog,” which gave her special clearance to bring him inside the dinner. She added he’s on Instagram.

Spotted Huey Lewis in the security line. No one knows why he’s here. He cleared the checkpoint then disappeared into the crowd before I could ask.

Also, Emma Watson is the BFF you always wanted: she stopped a woman in the ladies’ room to tell her she had a stray lipstick mark on her cheek. Girl code!

As the semi-famous and well-dressed nobodies line up to head into dinner, the real VIPs apparently get to skip the line. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is hustled through the crowd, flanked by security.

As other people start lining up to head into the venue space, Huma Abedin, in a strapless white and metallic sequin gown, gabs with girlfriends in a hallway. Eric Trump and his wife walk by and the three have what looks like a pleasant conversation. (Trump’s wife notes our shoes, a black pair of sneakers, and says that we made a “good choice with the footwear!”)

Bernie Sanders said in January that he does not own a tuxedo. “Never have I worn a tuxedo,” he said. Well, the presidential candidate is at the dinner tonight, and surprise! Sanders isn’t wearing a tux.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s husband John Bessler and their possessions waited in line, like plebs.

Sightings: former House majority leader Eric Cantor, Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg (knows all about the contested convention rules), RNC chairman Reince Priebus, Morgan Freeman, Rev. Al Sharpton, author/commentator Jeffrey Toobin and Burson-Marsteller CEO Don Baer, also a former senior White House adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Whoopi Goldberg bumped into Washington Post reporter Jessica Contrera without her noticing. When she looked up to see who it was, another lady said, “Did you see Whoopi’s shoes? They’re like giant boots.” (They were actually platformed Doc Marten-like sandals.)

We are still awaiting photos of said shoes. Here she is slightly earlier in the evening.

“No pictures!” shouted one of the many keepers. So the mash-up of Secretary John Kerry, “Downton Abbey’s” Michelle Dockery, Rachel McAdams and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was not recorded for posterity.

Some fun facts about the dinner from C-SPAN:

* About 2,700 people attend the dinner every year.
* Tickets cost $300 each.
* You have to be a member of the White House Correspondents’ Association to get a ticket. (Though those people can obviously invite guests.)
* You have to send a check to even be considered for an invitation.
* The association had to send 900 checks back for people who didn’t get in.
* About 1,000 random people are crowded upstairs in the hotel trying to get a glimpse of their favorite stars.

So far the Atlantic media party has been pretty devoid of celebrities unless you count Morgan Freeman (which everyone does), “Homeland’s” Damian Lewis and Oprah bestie Gayle King. “I feel like they’re purposely keeping them out,” said one guest who then ran to snap a photo of Freeman.

The biggest draw was refreshingly political: When Bernie Sanders walked in, the masses descended. The senator couldn’t move one step without being bombarded.

Bernie Sanders with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at the Atlantic Media’s 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association Pre-Dinner Reception. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

Bernie and Jane Sanders with actor Damian Lewis. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

At the ABC-Yahoo party, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright is mobbed by fans seeking photos. Unnoticed off to the side, actress Anna Kendrick is having a rare night of anonymity. Weird? “Kinda,” she admitted.

Kerry Washington greets Madeleine Albright at the Yahoo News/ABC News reception. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Yahoo)

Madeleine Albright with Raven-Symoné, of course. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Yahoo)

Will Smith arrives at the Washington Hilton Hotel for the correspondents’ dinner. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Will Smith is in a great mood tonight, or at least that’s how it seems as he banters with photographers on the red carpet. He and wife Jada Pinkett-Smith pose together, then Will wanders off so Jada can have a few solo shots. “WILL!!!” the photographers yell after awhile.

Will wanders back over, but only so he can make jokes, and take a selfie with all the photographers in the background who are taking pictures of him.

Jada and Will on the red carpet. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Obama’s motorcade pulled up to the back side of the Hilton (the side with the Reagan carport). He was followed a few beats later by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly. When their van was stopped a block short of the entrance by security (too close to the president’s motorcade maybe), Giffords, walking with a cane, had to stand on the sidewalk while Kelly talked the D.C. cops into sending a van down from the Hilton to give her a ride up. She didn’t wait long; van arrived and took her and Kelly to the entrance.

At the Hilton, Giffords and husband descended the escalators leading to reception rooms. She looked elegant in a black, floor-length gown. “Gabbbeeee” shrieked a passing party-goer (who didn’t seem to actually know the former congresswoman). She waved.

Carrie Fisher and her dog, Gary Fisher, walked the red carpet together, with Tom Hiddleston (seen below, admiring Gary).

Gary, by the way, has his own Twitter account. The Internet!

Julián Castro, secretary of housing and urban development, and his wife are hanging out at the Bloomberg party. He says that with young kids, they are not often out on the town. “This is a big night out for us.”

After a few minutes of pleasantries, he looks across the room and notices someone in the crowd. “Oh, there’s my brother!” His brother being Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.).

The intrepid Julia Carpenter is snapping from the Washington Post’s Snapchat account (washingtonpost) tonight.

Connie Britton, Michael Kelly, NeNe Leakes, Valerie Jarrett, Steny Hoyer, Reince Priebus, Jenna Fischer, Al Sharpton, Neve Campbell, Norah O’Donnell, Lisa Edelstein, the cast of “The View”… but the C-SPAN commentators are MOST excited about Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) and Allen Leech (Tom Branson) of “Downton Abbey.”

“I thought he and Lady Mary are going to get together,” one commentator confides about Tom Branson, whose character married Lady Sybil.

The Hilton sits at a cockeyed angle along Connecticut Avenue. Across the street at the humbler Courtyard by Marriott, no one is wearing tuxedos. But dozens of people have clumped along the railing outside the hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of, well, “anyone,” as Emily Gibson, a 21-year-old interior design major at Marymount University in Arlington, puts it.

Gibson knows no White House correspondents or anything about them. But she’s intrigued by the buzz.

“I like the Secret Service,” she says, shivering beneath an umbrella. “They just came out with the dogs.”

Her friend, Brittany Mansourimoaied, has one person I mind, though: Nyle DiMarco, the cha-cha guy from “Dancing With the Stars.”

Oh, maybe one other person they might like to see, Gibson interjects, the thought popping into her just at the moment: “President Obama?”

A couple hours before the dinner started, Donald “Don” Trump Jr. was wearing jeans and hiking shoes as he got a tour of the Old Post Office Pavilion construction site, now his family’s hotel project on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The eldest Trump son was invited to his first correspondents’ dinner by the Wall Street Journal. “We’re not exactly black-tie function regulars,” he said of his family after the tour, “but as part of the unique experience we’re getting to go through as non-politicians, how do you say no to it?”

[And now, for a commercial break, Donald Trump pitches his D.C. hotel]

Veteran TV producer and professional Washington connector Tammy Haddad is squiring around Dame Helen Mirren. The pair is headed to the Bloomberg pre-party, and the people they pass are pretending not to openly gawk.

For her second trip to the WHCA dinner, Mirren chose a purple gown — and a hand-drawn symbol for Prince. “I admire great artists and he was a great artist,” she says. “I’d love to say that Prince himself did it in 1988 or something instead of me in the bathroom this morning.”

A random party-goer notes their luck when Secretary of State John Kerry also joins the event: “Well, now we can’t leave — the secretary’s here and Helen Mirren. This is the best it’s going to get.”

While Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) walks down the hallway with an aide who’s talking about celebrities, he is heard saying “I don’t know who any of these people are!”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is spotted in the lobby of the Hilton wearing workout clothes, making her way up to what we assume is one of the rooms upstairs.

Like many who are not actually attending the dinner, The Washington Post’s liveblog team are watching the red-carpet arrivals this evening on C-SPAN. And the unintentionally hilarious commentary is giving us life.

JD Heyman of People and someone else that we haven’t identified yet have, among other things, spent at least a solid minute discussing comfortable footwear for women, because you have to walk a lot at the correspondents’ dinner.

Here’s another recent highlight:

“Who’s that young lady?”
“That is a rising star…”
(two minutes later)
“Jaimie Alexander!”

And another:

“Is that Kennedy? From Fox? In the glasses?”
“Oh, that does look like Kennedy!”

Helen Mirren honors Prince with a purple dress and a temporary tattoo on her collarbone, as she walks down the red carpet with her husband, director Taylor Hackman.

As Bryan Cranston went down an escalator in the Hilton, he asked the person with him if he had his ticket. “I don’t think you’re going to need it,” he responded. “But I will,” Cranston’s wife quipped.

The Buzzfeed party, located in their new D.C. office blocks from the Washington Hilton, had a beer pong table set up. CNN’s Brian Stelter faced off against Politico’s Hadas Gold in a battle of media reporters. Hadas won.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) showed up, but a guest was disappointed he didn’t bring his twin brother for a showdown. “That would have been epic,” a guest said.

[Julián Castro could be VP next year — or out of a job. He’s ready either way.]

“WTF,” “OMG” and “LOL” stickers decorated the industrial-style office space with bare Edison bulbs and small paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There were red solo cups, a keg, fried chicken, half smoke and chili. It felt like a James Bond-themed, frat party, where they invited some “cool” members of the faculty.  

Also spotted: Mo Elleithee of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (formerly Democratic National Committee). The communications director for the candy lobby Chris “Gindy” Gindlesperger brought business cards with candy on the back and showed guests pictures of the company “candy car,” a smart car (smarties car?) wrapped in candy logos.

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/726517119148560384?lang=en

The WHCD red carpet is very out of C-SPAN’s element, so the channel invited a celebrity expert (People magazine deputy editor J.D. Heyman) to help provide commentary. The commentators excitedly spot Comedy Central fixture Keegan-Michael Key and “Quantico”/Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra. However, the commentators are most excited about Hollywood power agent Ari Emanuel, brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. “Very high-achieving family,” one commentator notes.

Gus Alzona is the lone protester outside of the Washington Hilton. He’s here to stand up against “the liberal media, including those on Fox News who claim to be conservative but they’re not.” This is where the media elite come, Alzona says, so this is where he needs to be. He brought this same sign to Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral as well. As the gown and tux-clad make their way across T Street, he’s choosing not to yell or chant. He’s going to sit quietly and hope they notice the sticker on his shirt that shows he’s supporting Ted Cruz.

Arianna Huffington will sit with Josh Ostrovsky —  a.k.a. the “Fat Jew” — at tonight’s dinner, according to one of Huffington’s many tweets hyping her guest list tonight. Ostrovsky runs a hugely popular Instagram account that regularly re-posts jokes from other people on the Internet — sometimes without credit.

Ostrovsky’s joke-borrowing habits became a big Internet controversy in August, when he was signed to the Creative Artists Agency. But, after an apology and a promise to start crediting the people who actually write the jokes from which he benefits, Ostrovsky and his millions of followers have moved on. 

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Even though tonight is the last White House correspondents’ dinner for the Obama administration, you can expect much of the same routine: red carpet, dinner and the much-anticipated comedy routines from the president and an actual comedian. (This year, it’s Comedy Central “Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore.)

Here are all the ways you can tune in:

When does it start and when does it end? 

This is C-SPAN’s big night, and the channel kicks off coverage at 6 p.m. with red carpet arrivals. The action dies down with dinner around 7:30 p.m. The schedule says President Obama and Wilmore will start their speeches at 9:45 p.m… however, for the last two years, they haven’t taken the stage until closer to 10:15 p.m. Expect everything to wrap up at approximately 11 p.m.

Besides C-SPAN, where else can I watch? 

You can livestream it on the C-SPAN website, on MSNBC starting at 7:30 p.m., and on washingtonpost.com when President Obama begins his speech.

On TV, CNN starts coverage at 7 p.m.; Fox News at 8 p.m.; and MSNBC at 9 p.m.

Which celebrities will be there?

Here’s a complete list of the VIPs scheduled to attend. Big names include Will Smith, Morgan Freeman and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. Expect lots of TV stars along with Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams of the Oscar best picture-winning “Spotlight.”