Comedian Hasan Minhaj (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central)

Donald Trump won’t be in attendance at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but the show must go on.

Hasan Minhaj, a senior correspondent with The Daily Show, will be headlining this year’s event, The White House Correspondents’ Association announced today.

The dinner, often called “Nerd Prom,” Washington’s worst weekend, and far worse, is traditionally a chance for the president to give a few of his own barbs and then get roasted.

But not this year. “I was not looking for somebody who’s going to roast the president in absentia,” WHCA President Jeff Mason said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “That’s not fair and that’s not the message we want to get across.”

The message, Mason says, is the importance of a free press. He expects Minhaj to riff on fake news, too.

Minhaj said in a statement that it was “a tremendous honor to be a part of such a historic event even though the president has chosen not to attend this year. SAD!”

The 31-year-old Muslim comic joined The Daily Show in 2014, and has since filed cutting segments on why Muslims fear Trump, gerrymandering, and the differences between U.S. and Canada when it comes to refugee policy.

While the dinner is ostensibly a way to raise money for scholarships, an investigation by Washingtonian found that more money goes to the association itself than to students.

Minhaj will go up against Samantha Bee, a Daily Show alum hosting a “Not The White House Correspondents Dinner” on the very same night in D.C.

While Mason doesn’t expect Trump to change his mind about attending, he said that the president and his staffers are still welcome at the dinner.

Trump has attended the dinner in the past. In 2011, he was there when then-President Barack Obama ran him over the coals, a moment that some of his advisers say prompted his presidential run.

Omarosa Manigault, a reality show villain turned White House staffer, told Frontline before the election that when she saw Obama “hammer” Trump, she thought, “Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I don’t know if he’ll be able to finish.”