Making time to prepare to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has not been easy. Presently I’m flying back to New York, where I live, on a red-eye after a show in Las Vegas. My wife and five kids, all under the age of ten, are at home waiting for me. On average, I have one media appearance every day and a half between now and then. I’m not asking you to cry for me. All of this momentum and publicity is terrific. And my preparation for the big night on April 25 is always simmering below the surface. It feels as if reading minds for the last 30 years has been training for this moment.

My goal is to have Donald Trump take part – and to save the best for last. If I could read only one mind in this world, it would be that of the most powerful person in the world. No one has ever really managed to predict what the President will say or do or think next. Maybe I will finally get a chance to unlock that puzzle. Trump is a figure unlike any other, and also in some ways the hardest to read. I think that’s by design. He has such an authenticity. You know that there is no way he would be in on what I’m doing.........

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