Biden took a dig at Putin during White House Correspondents’ Dinner, telling Trevor Noah he won’t be jailed for roasting him on stage

• Biden took a dig at Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. 
• He invited comedian Trevor Noah to the stage and said he wouldn’t go to prison for making fun of him.
• “Now you get to roast the President of the United States and, unlike in Moscow, you won’t go to jail,” Biden said.

President Joe Biden on Saturday took a jab at Russian leader Vladimir Putin, saying comedian Trevor Noah would not be imprisoned for making fun of the president in the US. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to turn this over to Trevor now, strap myself into my seat,” Biden said in his introduction for Noah at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. 
 
“And, Trevor, the really good news is: Now you get to roast the President of the United States and, unlike in Moscow, you won’t go to jail,” Biden added. 

Putin is known for orchestrating retaliatory efforts against his critics, usually through jailing or poisoning them. 

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of Putin’s most high-profile critics, was poisoned in 2020 with Novichok, a nerve agent that blocks signals from the nerves to the body and breaks down the body’s ability to do various functions. At the time, he had been en route to Germany to receive medical treatment. When he returned to Russia last year, he was arrested and detained. 

Since then, he’s been recovering in jail, continuing to speak out against Putin through his lawyers and allies. In March of this year, a judge accused him of fraud and embezzlement and sentenced him to 13 years in a maximum-security prison.

From prison, he’s also continued to protest, including by going on a hunger strike to bring attention to his medical condition. He said at the time of the hunger strike that his doctors have not been granted access into the prison, and he therefore has been unable to receive medical care.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is usually held every year to honor the journalists who report on the White House and the president. The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

But this year, Biden in his remarks at the dinner talked about the strength of the free press in the United States, as well as the role it has in upholding the pillars of democracy.