An election-year roast of US President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents' dinner has butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war.
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Protests outside the event on Saturday have condemned both Biden's handling of the conflict and the Western news' media coverage of it.
Biden, like most of his predecessors, used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents' Association banquet to jab at his rival, Donald Trump.
He followed the jokes with solemn warnings about what he said would happen if Trump won the presidency again.
With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year's event.
But speakers inside made only passing mention of the conflict despite some having to run a gauntlet of demonstrators.
Biden's speech, which lasted about 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
"Shame on you!" protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.
Chants accused US journalists of under-covering the war and misrepresenting it.
Criticism of the Biden administration's support for Israel's six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel.
Counterprotests back Israel's offensive and complain of anti-Semitism.
Biden's motorcade on Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding demonstrators.
Academy Award winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine were among the stars in the crowd of 3000 people at the event.
Kelly O'Donnell, president of the correspondents' association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work journalists do but noting the dinner is happening at "a complex moment for our nation," and in a decisive election year.
O'Donnell went on to list the scores of journalists who have been imprisoned across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice.
The families of those journalists were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners. She briefly mentioned journalists killed in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Biden began his roast with a direct focus on Trump, calling him "sleepy Don", in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.
He went on to note that despite being similar in age, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common.
"My vice-president actually endorses me," Biden said. Former vice-president Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump's re-election bid.
The president made a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.
"We have to take this serious - eight years ago we could have written it off as 'Trump talk' but not after January 6," Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.
Protest organisers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel's military since the war began in October.
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
According to a preliminary investigation released on Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza.
Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
Australian Associated Press
