NY Times Critic Buries Colin Jost’s ‘Muted, Vanilla’ White House Correspondents’ Dinner Performance

Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost may have got some compliments on CNN and MSNBC for his performance hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (along with some expected attacks from former President Donald Trump). But one prominent critic thought the Weekend Update co-host fell flat.

In a scathing review titled “On This Saturday Night, Colin Jost’s Jokes Fell Flat,” New York Times culture section critic Jason Zinoman panned Jost’s turn as emcee of the star-studded affair in Washington.

“Without his Weekend Update partner Michael Che next to him, [Jost] came off muted, vanilla, less assured than usual,” Zinoman wrote. “With long pauses between jokes, eyes darting side to side, he occasionally took a drink of water and at least once acknowledged the lack of laughter in the room.”

Early critical reception has been lukewarm for Jost’s set on Saturday night. Variety’s Brian Steinberg said Jost delivered a “mixed bag of Trump zingers, media jokes and Biden age wisecracks” but thought he ultimately won the crowd over at the end with a personal story about his 95-year-old grandfather in Staten Island — who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 because he considered Biden “a decent man.

The Times’ Zinoman likewise thought that to be Jost’s “strongest moment.”

“This earnest argument would have fit in a political convention or a civics class but was unusual to hear in this setting,” Zinoman wrote. “Wholesome sincerity from a stand-up comic can be more chilling than any transgressive joke.”

But Zinoman also noted that Jost took it easy on President Joe Biden.

“The [past] comics at [Biden’s] dinners, [Trevor] Noah and Roy Wood Jr., only gently roasted him,” Zinoman wrote. “But their performances were Bill Hicks polemics compared to the jokes by Jost.”