Analysis: What to watch during what could be Biden's final White House correspondents' dinner

Presidents and their staffs typically spend a few weeks working on comedy sets for the WHCA dinner. Notably, Biden over the last few weeks has taken some rather personal jabs at the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“And, by the way, remember when he was trying to deal with COVID? He said just inject a little bleach in your veins,” Biden said Wednesday, misquoting something Trump said as president in April 2020. “He missed. It all went to his hair.

“Look, I shouldn’t have said that,” a widely smiling Biden told the North America’s Building Trades Unions legislative conference as the audience in the same Hilton ballroom where he will be the headliner Saturday roared with laughter. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. You guys are a bad influence on me.”

Trump’s campaign has yet to comment on Biden’s third WHCA dinner appearance. But top campaigns officials on Thursday offered something of an assessment of how they think he’s doing.

“Joe Biden has a base problem. No matter how hard the White House and its communications department, the Mainstream Media, try to make it seem otherwise,” according to a memo from Chris LaCivita, Trump campaign aide and Republican National Committee chief of staff, and Susie Wiles, his de facto campaign manager.

“Joe Biden’s cognitive decline is getting worse,” the duo contended in the memo, released by the Trump campaign. “A person does not need a medical degree to see it, and he is one fall away from political disaster.”

The 81-year-old Biden will get a shot, perhaps his last one in that setting, to show he can stay up late, as he did during his March State of the Union address, and appear vibrant and sharp — or vibrant enough in the minds of voters.