 -- "The Daily Show" comedian Hasan Minhaj hammered President Donald Trump and his administration at the White House Correspondents' Dinner Saturday night, saying that the president, who skipped the event for a rally in Pennsylvania, "can't take a joke."

"I think he's in Pennsylvania because he can't take a joke," Minhaj said. "A lot of people told me, 'Hasan, that if you go after the administration it would be petty, unfair, and childish.' In other words 'presidential,' so here we go."

"I would say it was an honor to be here but that would be an alternative fact. It is not," Minhaj said. "No one wanted to do this, so of course it lands in the hands of an immigrant. It's how it always goes down. No one wanted this gig -- no one. Don Rickles died so you wouldn't ask him to do this gig. R.I.P. to Don Rickles, the only Don with skin thick enough to take a joke like that. RIP to the legend."

Minhaj said he was asked not to roast Trump and the administration without a representative there but felt he should anyway because the event is about celebrating free speech.

"Only in America would a first generation Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the President of America," Minhaj said. "The orange man behind the Muslim ban. And it's a sign to the rest of the world, it's this amazing tradition that not even the president is beyond the reach of the first amendment. But the president didn't show up. Because the man doesn't care about free speech. The man who tweets everything that enters his head refuses to acknowledge the amendment that allows him to do it."