The White House Correspondents Dinner hit its biggest controversy in 2006, when Stephen Colbert hosted during the Bush administratio n. Colbert was, at the time, an A-minus-to-B-level comedian and host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. Colbert performed in character as a conservative blowhard (a loose take on Bill O'Reilly, some would say), and it's still not clear who invited him to the White House to confront conservatives in person. Colbert performed the monologue entirely in character, i.e. insulting the very administration through an impressive circuitous satire. He didn't get a lot of laughs. He did get the last laugh, though. He was the Trojan Horse, sneaking into a boozy affair to lampoon the very people being celebrated. Fox and Friends pundit Steve Doocy wrote at the time that he thought Colbert went "over the line of what is appropriate when a sitting president is sitting four feet away." Most people thought Colbert had bombed, although Slate popped in to defend the comedian's performance . In 2015, years after the speech occurred, Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza wrote that it was "the most controversial Correspondents' Dinner ever." The WHCA did not make an apology on Colbert's behalf.