Last night’s Met Gala in New York fielded a feast of celebrities from Rihanna to Margot Robbie to Kim Kardashian and Bill Nighy. America’s political version of the Big Night Out took place at the Washington White House Correspondents’ dinner — with a tide of cocktail events and policy chinwags washing around it for several days. This week in Washington feels like the recovery zone from an event which has returned to full hoopla after the pandemic and a long sulk by Donald Trump, who declared it “so boring and so negative” (ie about him) that he snubbed it three times to host a “very positive rally” instead.
It’s no coincidence that Joe Biden launched his run for a second term in the White House just before the event. It was a chance to be seen side by side with a vice-president, Kamala Harris, with whom his relations have been strained, and to address the presidential elephant in the room: his age. The aim is to get unwelcome talking points dealt with, so that it becomes old news by the time the election race begins in earnest next year.
