It’s not all laughs in Washington
Correspondents’ Dinner jokes push the envelope.
WASHINGTON – Sarah Huckabee Sanders attended Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a representative of the Trump administration and got a front-row seat to a brutal roasting, courtesy of this year’s entertainer Michelle Wolf.
For the second year in a row, President Trump did not attend the annual D.C. bash thrown by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Instead, he held a rally in Washington, Mich., but commented on the night’s events on Twitter Sunday morning.
“While Washington, Michigan, was a big success, Washington, D.C., just didn’t work. Everyone is talking about the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner was a very big, boring bust ... the so-called comedian really ‘bombed,’ ” he wrote.
The evening typically includes playful roasts of the president and vice versa for the media. Wolf, host of The Break, premiering in May on Netflix, held nothing back, though she was just feet from the White House press secretary.
“I’m a little star-struck,” Wolf began. “I love you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Wolf ’s digs got increasingly rough as the night went on. “I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful,” Wolf said. “She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.
The sharpness and vulgarity caught some in the audience off-guard. Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer wrote on Twitter that the dinner was a “disgrace.”
Targeting White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, Wolf said: “Man, she has the perfect last name for what she does: Conway.” Ivanka Trump didn’t escape Wolf ’s gaze, either: “She was supposed to be an advocate for women. But it turns out she’s about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons.”
There were also plenty of Trump jokes. A few of Wolf ’s most biting:
“Like a porn star says when she’s about to have sex with a Trump, ‘Let’s get this over with.’ ”
Trump “wants to give teachers guns, and I support that, because then they can sell them for things they need, like (school) supplies.”
“I know as much as some of you might want me to, it’s 2018 and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up — unless you have Michel Cohen wire me $130,000.”
“I did have a lot of jokes about Cabinet members, but I had to scrap all of those because everyone has been fired. You guys have gone through Cabinet members quicker than Starbucks throws out black people.”
Wolf seemed to acknowledge the tension during her speech. “You should’ve done more research before you (asked) me to do this,” she said.
Wolf didn’t get a free pass from the media, either.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tweeted that Wolf “grossly insulted” Sanders. “Apology is owed to @PressSec and others grossly insulted ny Michelle Wolf at White House Correspondents Assoc dinner,” she wrote.
And MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski thought the jabs got too personal. “Women who use their government positions to spread lies and misinformation deserve to face the same withering criticism as men,” she tweeted. “But leave our looks out of it. Watching from home, I hurt for Sarah, her husband and her children.”