Trump can threaten and use vulgar language but Michelle Wolf can't tell jokes? Within 10 minutes of Michelle Wolf's 'vulgar' and 'nasty' act, she was already being drawn-and-quartered in the Twittersphere. Wait, what about Trump?

Bruce Kluger | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Sarah Huckabee Sanders roasted at White House dinner Comedian Michelle Wolf delivered a blistering critique of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, mocking Sanders' truthfulness, appearance and Southern roots, at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner Saturday. (April 29)

So let me get this straight, because I must be missing something.

Donald J. Trump admits on a recording that he freely grabs women “by the p---y” and gets elected president of the United States; but comedian Michelle Wolf cracks a joke in front of the formal-wear crowd at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — using practically the same words — and gets raked across the coals for being “vulgar,” “mean-spirited,” and “downright nasty” (that last rebuke courtesy of the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi, who evidently wrote it from his fainting couch).

Welcome to the United States of Hypocrisy.

Those who tuned in to the event on Saturday night know that it lived up to its increasingly farcical format: award presentations for journalists (good); rubber-chicken speeches about freedom of the press (snore); scholarships for young journalists (good) and 25 minutes of stand-up from a celebrity charged with squeezing laughs from a roomful of mannequins (good luck).

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This year, Wolf — a 32-year-old former-Wall Street grunt-turned-comedian, who just landed her own Netflix show — drew the short straw as the latest masochist to willingly step into that searing spotlight. And she didn’t disappoint: Within 10 minutes of the conclusion of her often funny, sometimes cringe-worthy, consistently profane set, she was already being drawn-and-quartered in the Twittersphere.

“Michelle Wolf is about as funny as stomach cancer,” blasted conservative gasbag Ben Shapiro (whose word-choice proves that he, too, might want to brush up on his comedic delivery).

But let’s face it: Wolf was never going to walk away from this dreaded gig in one piece. Formerly a showcase for safe, mainstream comics like Bob Hope, Rich Little and Jay Leno, the comedy spot at the annual gathering of politicos has been, in recent years, a show-biz hot potato, frantically tossed among edgy, up-and-coming comics who are willing to risk a little post-event tar-and-feathering in return for the coast-to-coast exposure.

In 2015, stand-up Cecily Strong used her time slot to remark on race relations in America (to former president Obama: “Your hair is so white, now it can talk back to the police”); and the following year, Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore, who is black, took it up a giant notch by calling Obama the n-word — to his face — and paying for it dearly the following morning.

But 2018 marks the first Correspondents’ Dinner of the #MeToo era, and Wolf — a genuinely funny woman who has successfully emerged in a boys-club profession — fittingly unloaded a fusillade of cover-your-groin zingers.

On being female: “It’s 2018 and I’m a woman, so you cannot shut me up. Unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

On Ivanka Trump: “She’s done nothing to satisfy women. So, I guess like father, like daughter.”

On vice president Mike Pence: “Mike Pence is what happens when Anderson Cooper isn’t gay.”

On press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who was sitting not three feet from her): “She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye.”

And in a show of equal-opportunity bashing, she took on the entire American media — including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and newspapers like USA Today: “I’m not going to go after print media tonight because it’s illegal to attack an endangered species.”

The best gut-punches of the evening, of course, were reserved for President Trump, virtually none of which can be reprinted here (though she did open her set by saying, “Like a porn star says when she’s about to have sex with a Trump, let’s get this over with”). Fortunately for Trump, he didn’t have to sit through the roast with forced, courteous smiles the way predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush did. That’s because he skipped the event for a second year in a row, choosing instead to attend a rally of his faithful in Michigan.

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That didn’t stop him, however, from declaring Wolf’s performance a bomb the following morning, joining a hyperventilating chorus of tut-tutters who deemed the comedian’s performance an “attack.”

And that’s where I start to burn up.

Just hours before Wolf took the stage, Trump eviscerated Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in front of the foam-mouthed crowd in Michigan, blaming Tester for the crash-and-burn nomination of White House physician Ronny Jackson to run the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I know things about Tester that I could say,” the president threatened, “and if I said them, he’d never be elected again.”

Now, seriously, what’s more obscene to you: a sitting president abusing the authority of his high office by trash-talking a sitting Senator, or a sharp-tongued comedian waking up a comatose crowd with a couple of dirty jokes?

But the hypocrisy didn’t stop there. Trump was joined in his faux-umbrage by a mob of equally phony pearl-clutchers, one more inexcusable than the next.

► New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman — who, not one week earlier, the president called “a Crooked H flunkie” in a Tweet — rushed to defend Huckabee Sanders for having to stoically endure Wolf’s rim shots. Can you say butt-smooch?

► Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called the evening a “disgrace,” a word that arguably defines his own lie-choked tenure as White House mouthpiece (a tumultuous gig that barely out-lasted the shelf-life of a jar of mayonnaise).

► And MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski unleashed a series of tweets to suggest that there’s no room for off-color commentary in these “serious times.” Is Brzezinski earnestly concerned about our nation’s moral salvation, or was she just smarting from Wolf’s observation that her engagement to her “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough was “like when a #MeToo works out.”

Look — this is America, and among the many liberties granted to us by our Constitution is the right to think a comedian sucks. And we’re allowed to say that. But let’s get off our high horses, shall we?

Or, as the legendary George Carlin once said, "It's a comedy show. Lighten up."

Bruce Kluger is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on twitter @bruciek2000.