For 79 years, the Al Smith Memorial Foundation dinner at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel has featured the leading candidates of each party for a lighthearted night of political roasting - of themselves, each other, and other celebrities, politicians, and dignitaries in attendance. All of the proceeds go to benefit Catholic Charities, and the evening usually is a lot of fun. 

This is not the first go-round for Donald Trump at these dinners, and he's had a mixed track record on his performances there over the years. In 2016, with Hillary Clinton seated just a few feet from him, he tore into her. There was no light touch, no tongue-in-cheek delivery style. It was a hard-hitting rhetorical attack. In other years, his appearances were much more delightfully self-deprecating and winsome. 

The former and probable future President's appearance last night was definitely a one-sided affair, because his political opponent, Kamala Harris, chose not to appear. The last presidential candidate stiffed the Catholics was Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984. He would go on to win Minnesota and the District of Columbia. That's it. It was as lopsided of an Electoral College drubbing as this country has seen in the last century. So Trump had an open backfield, as it were, and used it mostly with charm and grace, albeit infused with biting, sarcastic humor. But there also was the flashback to the Trump of old, at one point dropping the pretense of making a joke in noting that former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was present and was the worst blankety-blank disgrace for a mayor he's ever seen. 

But as for the prepared remarks and joke set, Trump went into the lion's den of New York liberal elites and killed it. Even if they didn't find the jokes funny at times, people all over regular America did. Here's the greatest hits. 

On whether he would be self-deprecating this time at the dinner: 



On Kamala Harris hosing Catholic Charities by not showing up.



Manhattan District Attorney Letitia James was right behind him looking over his right shoulder. There's not a Republican she's met for which she hasn't found a reason to indict. He didn't make eye contact, didn't speak with her, but let it be known he knew she was there.



Since Kamala Harris gave Donald Trump the equivalent of the empty chair treatment Clint Eastwood used to debate at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Trump came back to her time and time again. 



It's still inexplicable why the governor of a state with 1.7 million Catholics found it necessary to sexualize and desecrate the most sacred of rites in the Church - the Eucharist. Trump tied Harris directly to Whitmer, and did so with humor. 

Trump also noted that Harris has been nagging him of late to do another debate, but explains why he doesn't believe that's necessary. 



While Harris is in the process of losing a significant chunk of Black voters, of Latinos, Jewish-Americans, labor rank-and-file voters including firefighters and Teamsters, young voters, males of all colors and educational backgrounds, independents, and Catholics, she is trying to win over that all-important subgroup - White Dudes For Harris. Trump doesn't seem too worried.



His barbs at Kamala sometimes went high, going after her intelligence,



Sometimes, he went pretty low. 



The fact that the Gollum of American politics, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, was seated immediately to the left of the podium, was not lost on Trump.



And he wrapped up his comedy set by making all of the Democrats in the room squirm in their seats.



He also finished off in a way that should be disarming to his political opponents. It should be, but the Trump Derangement Syndrome they're suffering prevents anything but seething hatred to color their vision. He reflected on his personal journey of faith after surviving two assassination attempts by noting God's providence and his appreciation for God's mercy.



In short, this night was everything Donald Trump could have hoped for and more. Naturally, Kamala Harris, as tone deaf as ever, released this statement following the evening. 

Here’s Kamala’s statement on Trump’s roast.

Her campaign is operating in a different universe. pic.twitter.com/n1meAhQ9RC

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) October 18, 2024

It's unclear she has even the first understanding of what the evening is supposed to be. Maybe that's why her campaign adopted the "Stranger Danger" mentality and avoided it like the Plague. 

Harris did feel the need to do the obligatory pandering video, taped well in advance, so that she could be represented at the dinner in a safe, focus-grouped, consultant-approved manner. Team Harris has no idea how disappointed even the Manhattan left-wing elite bubble are with her decision to not show up. Right at the beginning, Al Smith dinner vice chair and event organizer Mary Erdoes made the announcement that Kamala had been invited but declined to appear. She was roundly booed by a vastly Democratic audience.



Comedian Jim Gaffigan, who is very much on the left, ideologically speaking, and who has recently been killing it on Saturday Night Live playing Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz, also teed off on Harris and the Democrats for skipping this event. 

Kamala gets roasted for being the first presidential nominee since 1984 to skip the Al Smith charity dinner:

"She did find time to appear on The View, Howard Stern, Colbert — and the longtime staple of campaigning, the Call Her Daddy podcast..." pic.twitter.com/gVBxTcv6ou

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

Gaffigan also threw shade at the Democrats' rhetoric of muh democracy.

Jim Gaffigan: "The Democrats have been telling us Trump's reelection is a threat to democracy. In fact, they were so concerned of this threat, they staged a coup, ousted their democratically elected incumbent, and installed Kamala Harris." pic.twitter.com/ZVgqMbT2p5

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

The jabs at the coupists inside the DNC continued.

Jim Gaffigan: "President Biden couldn't be here tonight. The DNC made sure of that." 😂 pic.twitter.com/UW0F3B7968

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

We've seen lots of subcutaneous speculation this week that the remnants of the Biden White House may have concluded that it's not such a bad thing to go down in history as the only person to have beaten Donald Trump. And that can only be so if they intentionally or unintentionally undermine Kamala's campaign and hamstring her down the stretch. That tension and political dynamic wasn't lost on Gaffigan.

JIM GAFFIGAN: "The media has begun discussing the phenomena of 'secret Trump voters' — people who publicly say they'd never vote for Trump, but then when they go in the voting booth, they do. It's a small group. They're called the 'Biden family.'"

😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/73F7exog95

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 18, 2024

The moment finally came to go to the videotape for the sanitized, campaign-approved message from Kamala Harris. Since she was addressing Catholics, naturally, she felt the need to bring back Molly Shannon's Saturday Night Live recurring character, Mary Katherine Gallagher. 

here's the entirety of the comedy video Kamala Harris put together for the Al Smith dinner pic.twitter.com/jZco7weEY4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 18, 2024

Can we recognize the honest truth here? Molly Shannon was never really that funny on Saturday Night Live. She's currently a featured character on Season Four of Hulu's Only Murders In The Building, and in that role, she's hamming it up in a pretty funny way. But the sweaty armpits in the plaid Catholic school uniform and sniffing the armpits stuff, I could watch all the way through 25 years ago as it was happening and not find even one part of it amusing. Marty Short? Dana Carvey? Fall down funny. Comic geniuses. Shannon was always overrated as a comedic actress, in my view. 

Besides that, the tone deafness of the choice to bring back the character mocking Catholic schools and education seems an extraordinarily poor choice, especially in the same week that Gretchen Whitmer pulled her Dorito Eucharist stunt. It screams former Mets Manager Casey Stengel's line, "Can't anybody here play this game?" Prerecording a video mocking Catholics and delivering it remotely to their signature fundraising event meant to be a political roast is another in a long string of miscalculations. 

Gaffigan measured the audience's response to the Harris video, and here's what he came up with.

By last night, if you took stock on the winners and losers of the day, here's what has to be concluded. Israel won the day. Donald Trump won the day. You can make the case that the Cleveland Guardians won the day. As for who lost? Two-plus weeks out from the election, and Thursday fell off the calendar seeing Kamala Harris continuing to dig the hole in which she finds herself. How big of a hole? Here's Real Clear Politics' Electoral College map with leaning states tossed in. 

🚨 BREAKING: WISCONSIN FLIPS FOR TRUMP in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Trump now leads in every battleground.

🔴 Trump: 312 🏆
🔵 Harris: 226 pic.twitter.com/K1spaWuMWd

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 17, 2024

I'm sure there are plenty of people on the right that are still holding back on outward expressions of optimism, cautious that something's out there on the horizon to turn the tables back towards Kamala down the stretch. I'm just not seeing it. Not yet.