Did President Obama do a standup comedy routine at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner? Not as much as he performed “a recital of brutal truths,” asserted Vox’s Klein in a Monday article.

For example, regarding Obama’s remark that his executive actions on climate change and immigration were “the right thing to do,” Klein noted, “That's not a joke. That's Obama's actual justification for the aggressive executive actions of his second term…[O]nly [at the WHCD] can [he] say what everyone already knows: his actions are huge, they are controversial, they push the norms of American politics, but fuck it, at a moment when American politics seems increasingly broken, Obama has decided to just go ahead and do what he thinks is right.”