The same network that barely had anything to say about Donald Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” tape was in a full-on panic Monday morning over comedian Michelle Wolf’s jokes at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“I have never seen a comedian bomb so wholeheartedly as she did,” Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, who was in the room Saturday night, said just minutes after the show’s 6 a.m. start time. He imagined that Wolf is “high-fiving Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel” today “because she is saying exactly what they want her to say.”
Because how could this female comedian have a mind of her own?
ADVERTISEMENT
After playing the section of the speech in which Wolf called out Sarah Huckabee Sanders for lying to the media, Steve Doocy praised the White House press secretary for rising “above the shabbiness” and not reacting “in any way” to the jokes being told about her. “She just sat there stoically.”
“Not only did it cross the line,” Ainsley Earhardt said, repeating the widely held misconception that Wolf made fun of Sanders’ looks and calling Wolf’s language “filthy” and “x-rated.” She asked, “Isn’t it supposed to be a roast?” and added, “It’s fine to make fun and pick apart maybe something that was fun in the news, but make fun of someone’s looks? That’s over the line.”
Kilmeade later said he wished Wolf could have been more like “equal opportunity offender” Don Rickles or perhaps even someone “funny” and “smart” like Jay Leno. And even though Trump has decided to skip the event for the first two years of his presidency, Doocy said they should stop inviting comedians to speak as well.
“This president probably would come if he knew there wasn’t going to be a 15-minute rebuttal to whatever he said by somebody from Comedy Central,” Doocy added, seeming to misunderstand the entire point of the event.
As the hours went by, the hosts aired their same grievances again and again, expressing more outrage each time.
“Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale, if you Google that image, it’s not complimentary,” Earhardt said at one point, insulting actress Ann Dowd more than anyone else. “She’s a working mother, it takes a lot of work to do that,” Earhardt added of Sanders’ “smoky” eye makeup. “She’s doing the best job she can.”
