Michelle Wolf used to dissect human beings.
That’s not a joke: she actually cut up human flesh in a cardiovascular molecular laboratory as a kinesiology (exercise science) student in college.
Wolf, now a professional comedian, clearly got a taste for it.
On Saturday night, she took her flesh-slicing knife to Donald Trump in a speech of vicious savagery at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Or rather, she took it to his women in Trump’s absence.
‘Ivanka,’ Wolf snarled about the President’s daughter, ‘was supposed to be an advocate for women but she’s about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons. She’s done nothing to satisfy women. So, I guess, like father, like daughter.’
Warming to her theme, she added: ‘Ivanka cleans up nice. She’s the Diaper Genie of the administration. On the outside she looks sleek but the inside – it’s still full of sh*t.’
Michelle Wolf provided controversial entertainment at the 2018 White House Correspondents Association Annual Dinner on Saturday, April 28th
Wolf then took aim at the Counselor to the President.
‘Kellyanne Conway. Man she has the perfect last name for what she does: Conway. It’s like if my name was Michelle Jokes Frizzy Hair Small Tits. All she does is lie. It’s like that old saying: If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree?’
But Wolf reserved special ire for Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, comparing her to Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale – a plain, grim-faced torturer.
‘I think she’s very resourceful,’ Wolf smirked, ‘like she burns facts and then uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s the lies.’
Sanders has been subjected to many obnoxious personal jibes about her physical appearance, but never when she has been sitting just a few feet away from her tormentor saying it on national television.
The camera panned in her face and she looked stung and hurt, as any woman would do.
Sanders, whatever you may think of her, had the good grace to turn up and support the event, and would have expected some ribbing.
But she wouldn’t have expected to be exposed to public mockery over the way she looks.
It was cheap, nasty bullying of the worst kind.
And it came from someone who hates Trump because she thinks he’s a cheap, nasty bully.
Amazingly, the Sanders takedown wasn’t even the worse moment of Wolf’s diatribe.
That came when she said of Vice President Mike Pence: ‘He thinks abortion is murder, which, first of all, don’t knock it ‘til you try it – and when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you’ve got to get that baby out of there.’
The audience fell stonily quiet, with just a few embarrassed, awkward titters.
How could any self-proclaimed ‘feminist’ joke about abortion?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders in attendance at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner at Washington Hilton on April 28th
Wolf made no pretence at impartiality in her speech; she’s a hard-core liberal Trump-hater with a seething hatred for everything he stands for and everyone who works for him.
She even admitted to crying when Hillary Clinton lost.
Of course, it’s her absolute right under the 1st Amendment to think the way she thinks and to say so as she did on Saturday night.
However, it’s also MY right to condemn HER for an egregiously vile, personally abusive speech that exposed the liberal media in America for what much of it has sadly become: a Trump-bashing cesspit consumed with the very hatred it accuses the President of encouraging.
It’s also MY right to accuse HER of sickening hypocrisy.
Wolf’s act had some in the audience laughing but left others in stony silence, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who was seated just feet away
In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Wolf admitted the thing she hates most about Trump is his attitude to women.
‘The one thing that has been consistent about him through his life is he values women based on age and beauty,’ she said. ‘That for me was the really sad, hard thing because that’s the thing I’ve actively worked against. That’s the thing that’s been so hard for women to get away from.’
Yes, it is Michelle.
So why, on the biggest stage of your life, would you choose to denigrate women for the way they look?
Why would you reduce Sarah Sanders to a laughing stock by mocking her make-up and likening her to an ugly TV character?
Reaction to her jibes was fast and furious, even from media who’ve been severely critical of Trump.
‘Unfortunately,’ tweeted New York Times journalist Peter Baker, ‘I don’t think we advanced the case of journalism tonight.’
This may be the understatement of the Millennium.
Politico reporter Kyle Cheney spelled out the problem in more detail: ‘Michelle Wolf didn’t fail just because she was (spectacularly) one-sided. It was because she was unnecessarily cruel on a night the WHCA was trying to showcase decency and purpose.’
Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, herself the subject of totally unacceptable personal jibes from Trump, said: ‘Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable. I hurt for Sarah, her husband and her children.’
Andrea Mitchell, the highly respected veteran NBC News correspondent, demanded Wolf apologise to Sanders and others ‘grossly insulted’ by her speech.
There won’t be any apology.
Wolf did exactly she intended to do: napalm the night and make a name for herself.
She’ll be cackling away at the furore raging today, taking congratulatory calls from her fellow Trump-hating comedian mates, and quietly murmuring ‘Ker-ching!’ to herself.
Meanwhile Sarah Sanders will be left to pick herself up from a disgraceful onslaught.
I’ve only met Sanders once, when I interviewed Trump in Davos earlier this year. She was very professional, but also warm and friendly.
I’ve also watched her perform many times from the White House press room podium and she does an almost impossible job with admirable firmness, patience and good humour.
It is perfectly legitimate to criticise her for incorrect factual remarks, inadvertent or deliberate, that she has made from that podium.
The White House press secretary should always be as truthful as he or she can possibly be.
What is NOT legitimate is to target her in such an appallingly personal way.
This year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was supposed to salute the very best of US journalism, and there has been much to salute in the past year.
President Trump lashed out overnight Sunday, calling the dinner an ’embarassment’
Instead, it will be remembered for the nastiest speech in its history.
Wolf did manage to say one illuminating thing amid her bile, and it was aimed at the collective audience: ‘I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster and now you’re profiting off of him.’
She’s right; the US media has been Dr Frankenstein to President Trump and made itself very rich in the process.
Ironically, Wolf used Trump to help herself on Saturday night.
She’s now 100 times more famous and will doubtless profit enormously from this new notoriety. Her Twitter following tripled within hours.
But by even bigger irony, the main beneficiary from her speech will be Donald Trump.
It was so unpleasant it will merely serve to justify his belief, and that of his base, that the mainstream media are a bunch of hysterical, nasty, elitist and rankly hypocritical liberals out to get him.
This will strengthen, rather than weaken the President.