Trevor Noah Isn’t Sure He’d Want to Host White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Trevor Noah has more in common with President Donald Trump than you’d think. “My relationship with Donald Trump is one that was forged from day one,” the Daily Show with Trevor Noah host said in a recent interview. “I started when he started. I was an outsider when he was an outsider. We grew in this thing together.”

And, Noah told The Hollywood Reporter, “We both seem to be learning about the presidency at the same time.”

Noah devotes a lot of time on his show to Trump, but because he claims to understand the president, he is able to put some of the more outrageous things he says in context. “I don’t lose my mind and go crazy,” Noah said.

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While Noah has spent the first 16 months of the Trump presidency honing his jokes about the administration, that doesn’t mean he’s interested in telling Trump jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the future.

When asked if he’d host the dinner after seeing the backlash that comedian and 2018 host Michelle Wolf faced, Noah replied, “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know. Because I think of what the intention is. What am I trying to do? What is the dinner trying to do? What is it for? And, after this dinner, I ask that question even more now.”

Noah said he wasn’t surprised by the intensity of the reaction to Wolf’s remarks, which dinged Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, but he was “intrigued” by the role journalists playing in launching the backlash. Watching journalists criticize Wolf’s treatment of the administration in real time raised questions for Noah about the relationship between the White House and the press, he said.

Since taking over for Jon Stewart in September 2015, the South African comedian has distinguished his show in many ways. Where as Stewart’s Daily Show was heavy on criticisms of Fox News, Noah’s version rarely touches on the network.

“We seldom engage with Fox News,” Noah said. “And, that’s been because, as Trevor, I don’t watch Fox News. I encourage my audience to not watch Fox News. I don’t think you should put yourself through that.”

While Noah said he talks about controversies that originate on the network and then permeate the larger culture, including Laura Ingraham’s “shut up and dribble” comments about LeBron James in February, he doesn’t see Fox News as a conservative bogeyman worthy of daily broadsides. “We don’t see Fox News as the villain we’re chasing after,” he said.