President Donald Trump no longer appears to be the entertainer he once was, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported after the president’s appearance at a pared-down reprise of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.

Trump’s insult-heavy speech was met largely with stunned silence from the audience as he took aim at a series of journalists during the event, according to Stelter. The dinner, traditionally a high-profile gathering of political figures and the press corps that mixes comedy with journalism awards, put Trump’s media attacks in front of many of the same reporters and executives he targeted from the stage.

“Trump bombed at the ... Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it,” Stelter wrote. “But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.”

Stelter described the address as a “rambling hour-long speech” in which Trump attacked journalists by name, “repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with.”

At one point during the speech, Trump asked, “Does anyone understand this stuff?” Stelter wrote that the answer was “generally no. But more than anything, the speech was just … boring.”

“Trump’s low energy led more than one TV executive to muse that the president had stumbled upon a new technique against the media: Tank the ratings with a snoozefest,” Stelter added. “Some attendees said they were surprised that Trump didn’t bring more original material, given how highly anticipated the dinner was, in part because his attendance ended his years-long boycott of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual fundraiser.”

Many journalists declined to attend the event, which was staged as a smaller-scale redo of the April 26 black-tie dinner that was called off after a gunman tried to rush into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel. Trump joked about bulletproof vests and about attendees hiding under their tables while his staff, he said, bravely stood on tables and directed the crowd.

Trump also offered shoutouts to media executives he considers propaganda allies, including Larry and David Ellison, who took control of Paramount last year. The source article said they killed off the high-rating show of late-night comic gadfly Stephen Colbert, destroyed the legacy news program 60 Minutes and turned CBS News into a ratings flop.

Ellison is now seeking to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, making the media-ownership references especially pointed for an audience that included journalists and television executives.

“Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled,” Trump said, referring to changes implemented by Ellison’s handpicked editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss. “Their former leaders have been removed, and they’re now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She’s a wonderful woman.”

“The more resentful and recycled Trump’s speech got, the more attendees seemed to tune it out,” Stelter wrote.

Stelter said one of the most notable moments of the evening came during the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual journalism awards presentation. Trump watched as journalists received multiple prizes, including a “courage and accountability” award given to a team of Wall Street Journal reporters for investigative work on a lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s name.

The awards segment sharpened the contrast between the president’s attacks on the press and the association’s recognition of reporting that had drawn legal and access-related retaliation from the White House.

“Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadeeja Safdar’s home address,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said while presenting the award. According to Stelter, Trump “laughed and threw up his hands in an aw shucks-like gesture.”

“Her family had to be relocated,” Blitzer added in a more somber tone. “The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One, but the reporters continued to file revelatory stories.”