Answer: D. At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this year, Obama joked about suggestions for improving his relationship with Congress: “'Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?' they ask. Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?” Obama slings arrows, jokes at WHCD

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night gave President Barack Obama a chance to take humor-laced shots at those things in Washington that rub him the wrong way — Republicans in Congress, the media, his critics — and he also directed plenty of friendly fire at himself.

“I look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be,’” Obama quipped at one point, reflecting on how he’s aged into a second term.


( WATCH: Obama’s full remarks at WHCD)

While he was kidding about himself, Obama sharpened his sword when it came to the GOP.

“Some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. ‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask,” Obama said. “Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?” The line earned Obama one of his loudest applauses of the evening from the 2,700 in attendance at the Washington Hilton.

Along the same lines, Obama vowed to take his “charm offensive” on the road to “a Texas barbecue with Ted Cruz, a Kentucky bluegrass concert with Rand Paul and a book burning with Michele Bachmann.”

“My ‘charm offensive’ has helped me learn some interesting things about what’s going on in Congress. It turns out absolutely nothing,” Obama said.

( PHOTOS: Stars, politicos, media at WHCD)

The campaign is long over, but the president fired away at wealthy conservative businessman Sheldon Adelson, who spent much of 2012 working against Obama’s reelection.

“Did you know that Sheldon Adelson spent $100 million of his own money last year on negative ads? You’ve got to really dislike me to spend that kind of money. I mean, that’s Oprah money. … Sheldon would have been better off offering me $100 million to drop out of the race.”

( PHOTOS: Red carpet arrivals at WHCD)

It wasn’t all jokes, however. Obama offered some more somber thoughts about recent events to the star-studded crowd.

“Our thoughts are not far from the people of Boston, the people of West, Texas,” the president said. “There are people in the Midwest who are coping with some terrible floods. So we’ve had some difficult days. But whenever the day seems darkest, we have seen humanity shine at its brightest; we’ve seen first responders and National Guardsmen dash into danger, law enforcement officers who live their oath to serve and to protect and everyday Americans who are opening their homes and their hearts to perfect strangers.”

Given the nature of the dinner, Obama also saved some high praise for journalists themselves.

In a reference to the Boston Marathon bombings, Obama said, “If you ever wonder, for example, whether newspapers are a thing of the past, all you needed to do was to pick up or log on to papers like The Boston Globe. When their communities and the wider world needed them most, they were there, making sense of events that might at first blush seem beyond our comprehension, and that’s what great journalists do, and that’s why, for example, [NBC News’s] Pete Williams’s new nickname around the NBC newsroom is ‘Big Papi.’”

To be sure, it wasn’t all praise for the Fourth Estate.

Of CNN: “I know CNN has taken some knocks lately, but the fact is, I admire their commitment to covering all sides of the story, just in case one of them happens to be accurate.”

Of MSNBC: “David Axelrod now works for MSNBC, which is a nice change of pace since MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod.”

Of BuzzFeed: “I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m.”

Of the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd, Obama said: “Maureen Dowd said I could solve all of my problems if I was just more like Michael Douglas in ‘The American President.’ I know Michael’s here tonight. Michael, what’s your secret? Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy?”

And the president poked plenty of fun at himself.

After arriving at the podium to the rap song “All I Do is Win” by DJ Khaled, Obama said, “Rush Limbaugh warned you about this — second term, baby.”

“My advisers were a little worried about the new rap entrance music,” the president said. “They are a little more traditional. They suggested that I should start with some jokes at my own expense. Just take myself down a peg. I was like, ‘Guys, after four and a half years, how many pegs are there left?’”

And he ribbed himself for some of his recent flubs.

“I still make rookie mistakes,” Obama said. “Like, I’m out in California; we’re at a fundraiser; we’re having a nice time; and I happened to mention that Kamala Harris is the best-looking attorney general in the country. As you might imagine, I got in trouble when I got back home. … Who knew Eric Holder was so sensitive?”

“And then there’s the Easter Egg Roll, which is just supposed to be a nice event with the kids. I got out on the basketball court, took 22 shots, made 2 of them. That’s right, 2 hits, 20 misses. The executives at NBC asked, ‘What’s your secret?’”

Obama also said he’s “hard at work on plans for the Obama library, and some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace, but I’d rather keep it in the United States,” a reference to the conspiracy theories that he was born abroad.

Even when Obama made fun of others — take Sen. Marco Rubio, for instance — the arrow was pointed at him, as well.

“I don’t know about 2016. I mean the guy has not even finished a single term in the Senate, and he thinks he’s ready to be president. Kids these days!”

Obama wasn’t the first one to kick the night off with humor.

Fox News’s Ed Henry, who is this year’s president of the Correspondents’ Association, took advantage of his turn in the spotlight by providing some comedic fodder of his own. The night began with a humorous video that played off Netflix’s “House of Cards,” featuring cameos from Valerie Jarrett, Jay Carney, Sen. John McCain, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Steny Hoyer, Ben Smith, Charlie Rose, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and POLITICO’s own John Harris and Mike Allen. The shtick was that Kevin Spacey, who plays Rep. Frank Underwood on the Washington-based show, was in charge of who got tickets to the dinner and where their tables were placed.

“Welcome to Nerd Prom,” Spacey said at the videos’ conclusion, a hat tip to the nickname the dinner has adopted in recent years.