On "The Daily Show", Jon Stewart remarked, tongue in cheek, "apparently was under the impression that they'd hired him to do what he does every night on television". While comics were expected to tell jokes about the administration, the 2006 dinner was held at a time when the relationship between the administration and the media was under great strain, and the administration was sensitive to criticism. Attorney and columnist Julie Hilden concluded that Colbert's "vituperative parody" might have been unfair under different circumstances, but noted that Bush's record of controlling bad press created a heightened justification for people to criticize him when they got the chance. Media Matters and "Editor & Publisher" came to Colbert's defense, calling his detractors hypocrites. They contrasted the critical reaction to Colbert to the praise that many in the press had for a controversial routine that Bush performed at a similar media dinner in 2004, where Bush was shown looking for WMDs in the Oval Office and joking, "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!" and "Nope, no weapons over there!"