Media

Reporters Slam White House Correspondents’ Dinner As ‘Embarrassment’ And ‘Gift’ To Trump Admin

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
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Several reporters found comedian Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday to be detrimental to the mission of the evening and a gift to President Donald Trump, who was not in attendance but at a political rally in Michigan.

Wolf took gratuitous shots at President Trump and White House officials that journalists at the Associated Press, Politico, Yahoo News, The New York Times, and CNN found to be cruel and off-putting. Wolf laughed at the audience following the negative response of one vulgar joke.

“Yeah, you shoulda done more research before you got me to do this,” she said.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders received many of Wolf’s lobs as did White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell called for an apology to Huckabee Sanders.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny lamented with New York Times reporter Peter Baker that the annual dinner did not advance the cause of journalism. Zeleny added he thought the dinner was an “embarrassment.”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney said in a tweet that Wolf bombed and “undermined an otherwise meaningful evening.” Cheney remarked the comedian’s set “was (spectacularly) one-sided. It was because she was unnecessarily cruel on a night the WHCA was trying to showcase decency and purpose.”

Cheney’s colleague Tim Alberta at Politico Magazine agreed tweeting Sunday morning:

New York Times White House reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted how Huckabee Sanders reacted to the harsh jokes about her appearance.

Jon Ward, a reporter for Yahoo News, tweeted that he was not laughing and found himself “aghast” at many of Wolf’s jokes. He added that her routine “took mean spirited personal shots” and “was a political gift to the Trump admin.”

The Associated Press described Wolf’s routine as a “vulgar riff on Trump and party politics…”

Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard said the dinner made the job of journalists much more difficult as far as public trust is concerned.

However, not everyone was unsatisfied. The Nation’s Joan Walsh defended the evening’s entertainment saying, “This is gonna be a 2005 @StephenatHome moment: the crowd is scandalized (even some liberals), but a lot of people see it as the right reaction to the scandal that is @realDonaldTrump.”

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