Donald Trump is a funny, engaging man. He’s an entertainer. Kamala Harris is boring, dull, and awkward. If you take nothing else from the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner (a.k.a. the Al Smith Dinner), take that.

It’s traditional for presidential candidates to attend the dinner, which is a major Catholic fundraiser, and give a roast. Trump did, and he had some howlers. By contrast, Harris was a no-show, emailing a cringy video with an old Saturday Night Live star.

Anyway.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan, who is Catholic, was the MC for the event, and he teased both candidates. His best line was way too true: “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.”

Early in Trump’s remarks, he teased, “This will be the first time in the history of this event where jokes will be fact-checked.” Stay tuned for that to become reality. (The Washington Post huffed, “Trump delivers profanity, below-the-belt digs.” There wasn’t really any fact-checking, but the “news” story conveyed that the Post was collectively surly and miffed.)

Now, I’ll just pull some of the lines that made me laugh because it’s Friday and why not?

It’s a true pleasure to be with you this evening. Amazing pleasure. And these days, it’s really a pleasure anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance.

The last Democrat not to attend this important event was Walter Mondale, and it did not go very well for him. He lost 49 states, and he won one, Minnesota. So I said, there’s no way I’m missing it.

If you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis, and she would have been here. Guaranteed.

I really hoped that she would come because we can’t get enough of hearing her beautiful laugh. She laughs like crazy. We would recognize it any place in this room.

I don’t think Kamala has given up yet. … Instead of attending tonight, she’s in Michigan receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer.

If Democrats really wanted to have someone not be with us this evening, they would have just sent Joe Biden.

Joe has almost disappeared from view. The only way he could be seen less is if he had a show on CNN.

Right now, we have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child. It’s sad. There’s a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever, but enough about Kamala Harris.

There’s a group called White Dudes for Harris. … But I’m not worried about them at all because their wives and their wives’ lovers are all voting for me.

A major issue in this race is childcare, and Kamala has put forward a concept of a plan. A lot of people don’t like it. The only piece of advice I would have for her in the event that she wins would be not to let her husband Doug anywhere near the nannies.

Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening. So here it goes. Nope. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. There’s nothing to say. I guess I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me for a hell of a long time.

Unfortunately, Governor [Tim] Walz isn’t here himself. But don’t worry. He’ll say that he was.

I used to think the Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods. But then I met Tim Walz.

I’d better wrap up because Mayor Adams told me earlier that I needed to make this one very quick. … The city has reserved this room for a large group of illegal aliens coming in from Texas.

He ended on a much more serious note with several minutes devoted to the challenges we face in America. But humor is really the point. “The nature of the evening is to bring people together,” said New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, complaining earlier this week that Harris wouldn’t attend. “The nature of the evening is civility, patriotism, humor.”

Just remember that as the two presidential candidates vie for the culture, one of them delivered and the other phoned it in.

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