Trump Boo’ed at Charity Event

trump-dinner

The Al Smith dinner, an election year tradition, was held tonight. It’s supposed to be a fun event, where the candidates poke fun at each other. Donald, two words…joke writer.

Donald Trump should have been on friendly territory Thursday night at the annual Al E. Smith Dinner. At the formal annual event named in honor of New York’s 4 time Governor and the first major party candidate for President to be Catholic when he ran and lost in 1928, Trump was surrounded by a who’s who of New York City dignitaries. It was all people that he knew for years and had worked or socialized with one way or another. The dinner always hosts the Presidential candidates in an election year. The evening is designed to be a light-hearted roast where the candidates joke about their own shortcomings and their opponent’s. Kennedy and Nixon spoke at the 1960 dinner as well as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the list of Presidential opponents goes on to modern day. Thursday night, what was suppose to be fun, turned into an evening where the crowd turned on Donald Trump, booing and heckling him during his routine aimed at Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump started out having fun enough with the inherent awkwardness of the event. He even made a joke about his wife Melania plagiarizing her convention speech from First Lady Michelle Obama’s convention speech years before. Trump said his current wife didn’t know he was going to make that joke and asked Cardinal Dolan to speak with her. It was all fun and humor and then Trump’s prepared statements started to turn dark.

The laughs got fewer and more polite as Trump talked about Hillary’s FBI interview over the past 4th of July holiday. The smile started disappearing from Hillary Clinton’s mouth for longer periods of time as well as the mouths of the audience who no longer found Trump’s act funny. As soon as the Republican nominee started his next zinger with the words, “Hillary is so corrupt…”, the boos started to rain in and the crowd was lost. It was almost like Trump was waiting for the crowd response of “How corrupt is she!?”. It never came. Trump then went to part of his stump speech about Hillary being an ineffective leader for the past 30 years. He joked about her deceiving people while referencing information found in Wikileaks. You can actually watch the discomfort on the faces of the people around and behind Donald Trump as he, despite the heckling, continued on with lines about Hillary hating Catholics (another reference to communications stole from the DNC) and failing to help Haiti. Funny stuff Donald.

As for Hillary Clinton’s speech, she tried to keep it lighter and more self-deprecating before taking some shots at Donald Trump. In the quick clip of Hillary’s remarks below, she points out former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the audience and makes fun of another former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani for his new position of being a Trump surrogate.

The white-tie Al E. Smith Dinner was organized 71 years ago and raises money for Catholic charities for needy children.

Read more comedy news.