When Israeli-American mentalist Oz Pearlman got the call inviting him to perform before the president of the United States and a roomful of dignitaries and journalists at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, on April 25, he was taken aback.
“I thought I was being pranked, because, frankly, I just I’d never heard of anybody but a comedian doing this,” he told JNS prior to the event. “I like to think I’m funny, but I don’t know if I’m that funny.”
The more that Pearlman learned, the more he read between the lines. U.S. President Donal Trump wasn’t interested in getting roasted in front of the media, as he was mocked relentlessly by then-President Barack Obama at the 2011 dinner, where he couldn’t fight back from his seat.
In 2018, during his first term in office, Trump skipped the dinner and was blasted in absentia by comedian Michelle Wolf. The association apologized to him for perceived crassness of some of the jokes directed at him and at his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor of Arkansas, who sat on the dais.
“I was brought in to unite the room in a sense of wonder,” Pearlman told JNS, of his apolitical act.
“If you look at the landscape of our country right now, I don’t think we need any more division,” Pearlman said ahead of the dinner. “I love comedy. I’m not talking down upon it. I’m just saying that what it does is not universal, and what I do is truly one of the few things that’s universal—where people love to be amazed.”
“People love to be wowed,” he said. “It’s hardwired in our DNA from thousands of years ago.”
Pearlman didn’t know at the time that a gunman, who has said that he sought to assassinate the president and who was staying at the hotel where the dinner was held, would try to enter the event. Secret Service agents whisked Trump and other senior U.S. officials out of the event, and the president has said that the event will be rescheduled.
Pearlman, who was talking to Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as Secret Service swarmed the stage to protect the president after shots were fired, declined to talk to JNS after the event about his experience.
He told the New York Times that he thought there might be a bomb. “At that moment, I truly believe the room is about to explode,” he told the paper. He also said that he couldn’t get to his wife, who was also in the room, and that Secret Service officers brought the president near him.
“He’s facing stage right, I’m facing stage left. We’re right next to each other,” he told the Times. “I turn and look. He turns and looks right in my eyes. Then they rush him out.”
The mentalist also told the paper that he stayed on the ground. “It was pure fear in everybody’s eyes,” he told the Times. “I thought, standing up I might get shot.”
Before the event was halted abruptly, Pearlman leaned over a seated Trump and showed him a piece of paper on a notepad. The mentalist was talking to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, and turned the pad to show the latter what he had written: “Viviane.”
Leavitt is due to have her second child, and Pearlman’s challenge was to guess the name.
Leavitt appeared to be stunned in reaction to Pearlman’s reveal. Moments later, she was again shocked, amid the chaos of audible shots rang out in the hotel.
“When it happened, she said, ‘I don’t know how the hell you guessed my daughter’s name,’” Pearlman told USA Today.
Before the event, the mentalist told JNS that his goal was engaging the audience and “making them the stars.”
That was supposed to include Trump. Pearlman told JNS that his job was supposed to “make him feel rapport, make him feel safe, make him feel that this is going to be a great moment for not only myself but also for him.”
Pearlman went into the evening aware of Trump’s showmanship and ability to capture the public’s attention. He is convinced that he was brought on, because he could find a way to get Trump on the stage, after so many years in which the president declined.
“This is what I do. I find a way for people to open up to me,” Pearlman told JNS prior to the event.
“The goal of a mentalist is to build rapport and see what makes people tick and how they think,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years, and my hope is to win him over so that he will want to take part in an incredible moment.”
It isn’t clear if Pearlman would perform again at the dinner, if it is rescheduled, as the president has said it will be.
The mentalist has shows slated for May 2 in Las Vegas and June 5 in Atlantic City, and a Netflix special is scheduled to be taped in his hometown, Brooklyn, on July 16.
He told JNS that he had no plans to include any Jewish or Israeli angle in the entertainment at the dinner before the president.
“A core part of my identity is the fact that I am Jewish, and that’s not something I would ever hide or avoid,” he said. “It’s woven into the tapestry of my humor, of my performance.”
The mentalist noted that some of the greatest magicians have been Jewish, including the late Harry Houdini and David Copperfield.
“I don’t know if anyone’s really done a deep dive into why that is,” he told JNS. “We’re the questioning people, and the people that question the most are the ones who try to figure out how things work.”
“That’s literally what I’ve been doing for 30 years,” he added, “figuring out how the human mind works.”
