Celebrities Pan Trump Before White House Correspondents Dinner

2 minute read

On the eve of the White House Correspondents Association dinner, many celebrities thought that the 2016 election had taken a turn for the dramatic with the rise of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Michael Kelly, who plays Doug Stamper on the popular Netflix drama House of Cards, said that the election mirrors some of the plot lines that show’s writers cooked up more than a year ago.

“It’s certainly crazier things in this election than anything that I’ve ever seen in House of Cards. Look at the parallel story at what could possibly be the contested convention, that’s insane,” Kelly told TIME. “When we wrote that a year ago, did I really think that would come to life? Never in a million years.”

Trump, the real estate mogul currently in first place for the GOP nomination, is expected to be the butt of many of comedian Larry Wilmore’s jokes at Saturday’s dinner.

Vivica A. Fox, star of the upcoming film Independence Day: Resurgence, told TIME that the Trump we see on the presidential trail was nothing like the person she met during her time on Celebrity Apprentice 7 and that he had “turned politics into a reality show.”

Another former member of The Apprentice cast, Omarosa Manigault, wasn’t quite so pleased that so many of Wilmore’s jokes would come at Trump’s expense Saturday.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of jokes about Trump,” Manigault told TIME. “But I think the biggest joke is on them because he’s going to be the President of the United States.”

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