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		</div><p>Donald Trump has declared that the media are the &#8220;enemy of the people&#8221;, but his vice president showed he is still willing to joke around with reporters &#8211; and poke fun at himself &#8211; in a venerable Washington tradition.</p>
<p>Mike Pence was the featured speaker at the 132nd annual Gridiron Dinner, a comedic white-tie affair featuring skits, songs and speeches.</p>
<p>He called the dinner &#8220;a light-hearted respite&#8221; from bruising Washington politics and dished out a number of jokes, including a dig at the Best Picture blunder at least week&#8217;s Academy Awards.</p>
<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;t seen that many shocked Hollywood liberals since November 8,&#8221; Mr Pence said, recalling Mr Trump&#8217;s upset Election Day victory.</p>
<p>The president did not attend the dinner, instead spending the weekend at his coastal Florida estate.<br />
For more than a century, every president has spoken at the dinner at least once.</p>
<p>While most of Mr Pence&#8217;s remarks were self-deprecating, he also chastised reporters over what he considered unfair news coverage, seeming to channel his boss, the media critic in chief, by saying &#8220;we all just have to do better&#8221;.</p>
<p>Most of the night was good-humoured, with jabs at Hillary Clinton, White House leaks and the lingering question of Russian influence in the election.</p>
<p>House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who was the featured Democratic speaker, belted out &#8220;don&#8217;t take my Medicare away&#8221; during a skit on the main stage.</p>
<p>Standing a few feet away from Mr Pence, she said: &#8220;This president has appointed so many people from Goldman Sachs to his cabinet that there&#8217;s no one left there to listen to Hillary&#8217;s speeches.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Does the president know you&#8217;re here laughing with the enemies of the people?&#8221; she asked Mr Pence. &#8220;It&#8217;s okay, Mr Vice President. People here can keep a secret &#8230; unlike at the White House.&#8221;<br />
She said she was sorry Mr Trump and his wife could not be there but offered a greeting to the first family &#8211; in Russian.</p>
<p>Iowa senator Joni Ernst, who gave the Republican address, said her goal was simple: &#8220;To make this speech shorter than Mike Flynn&#8217;s time at the NSA.&#8221;</p>
<p>She also noted that Mr Pence was &#8220;one heartbeat away from being the second most-powerful person in the country&#8221; &#8211; behind White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.</p>
<p>Among the Washington names in attendance were former secretary of state Colin Powell, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and the subject of many jokes, White House press secretary Sean Spicer.</p>
<p>The Gridiron Club was founded in 1885, just after the election of Grover Cleveland. He never attended a dinner, but every president since has been at least once.</p>
<p>Fifteen journalists formed the club and instituted the formal dinner, in modern times held every year at a central Washington hotel in a setting less glitzy and celebrity-studded than its more famous cousin, the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner.</p>
<p>Mr Trump has said he will not attend that event this year either.<br />
Barack Obama attended the dinner three times while in office. George W Bush made it six out of eight years.</p>
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