“After Trump got elected, women started knitting those pussy hats. When I first saw them, I was like, ‘That’s a pussy?’ I guess mine just has a lot more yarn on it,” Michelle Wolf said a few minutes into her now-infamous White House correspondents’ dinner monologue. “You should have done more research before you got me to do this.”

Had they, they would have noticed her HBO special, in which she joked there’s never been a female presidential assassin because “women are too nice.” Or her post-election summary of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory on The Daily Show, when she said, “I feel like I just broken with [by] someone who’s uglier and has a worse personality. I mean, how did this happen? Experienced politician vs. racist fake gynecologist.”

Or when on another Daily Show appearance she said of Kellyanne Conway, “When she’s done talking, I don’t know if my mouth is my ass or my ass is my mouth.” Or another, where she called Megyn Kelly in her Fox News days a “pretty, race-baiting puppet who Roger Ailes kept trying to put his hand up.”

Either the White House Correspondents’ Association didn’t do their research, or they did and thought Wolf was funny, which she is. But it’s too late now, as she managed to kick up a load of controversy Saturday evening at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC.

Her jokes about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quickly became a point of contention online, and the fallout has extended past the weekend. She also took jabs at Conway and Kelly — which, given her past comedy, is not exactly a surprise.

Wolf told NPR in an interview that will air on Tuesday that she has no regrets about her performance. “I wouldn’t change a single word that I said,” she said. “I’m very happy with what I said, and I’m glad I stuck to my guns.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner usually sparks a debate about the media and its coziness with the White House. Journalists are supposed to have an adversarial relationship with those in power, but at the White House, they have to toe a fine line to maintain their access as well. The dinner is technically a party thrown by the press for the White House, their invited guests, and so every year, people are upset about the dinner because they see it as elites hobnobbing with one another.

Trump’s choice to skip the dinner the past two years quieted that debate somewhat, but Wolf’s monologue Saturday, and particularly her lines targeting Sanders, brought it back. Conservatives and some journalists who attended said Wolf went too far. The White House Correspondents’ Association expressed regret over the monologue. Trump has aired his grievances about the event on Twitter.

At the heart of the uproar is a bigger question: Should a comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner play it safe for the audience in the room? Or should she take some more pointed shots at the crowd of political and journalistic elites who spend the night acting like they’re all in on the same joke?

Wolf joked about abortion, Ivanka Trump, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Wolf signaled early in her monologue Saturday night that she wasn’t there to pull punches: “I am 32 years old, which is an odd age — 10 years too young to host this event, and 20 years too old for Roy Moore,” she said. “I know, he almost got elected, yeah. It was fun. It was fun.”

Wolf is a former Daily Show correspondent and host of an upcoming Netflix late-night show, The Break with Michelle Wolf. She’s also appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where she performed her own stand-up and played recurring characters, such as a grown-up version of Little Orphan Annie. According to a recent New York Times profile of her, Wolf originally had a career in finance but quit to start improv classes in New York. She has a sharp, self-deprecating sense of humor, and Meyers to the Times described her as “either the meanest nice person I know or the nicest mean person I know.”

Her Saturday monologue, which lasted nearly 20 minutes, touched on issues including the Democratic Party, Kellyanne Conway, abortion, and the financial crisis:

On Mike Pence and abortion: “He thinks abortion is murder. Which, first of all, don’t knock it until you try it. And when you do try it, really knock it, you know, you gotta get that baby out of there. You can groan all you want, I know a lot of you are very anti-abortion, you know, unless it’s the one you got for your secret mistress. It’s fun how values can waver.”

On #MeToo and the financial crisis: “I did work at Bear Stearns in 2008, so although I haven’t been sexually harassed, I’ve definitely been fucked. That whole company went down on me without my consent, and no men got in trouble for that one either.”

On Ivanka Trump: “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.”

On Kellyanne Conway: “You guys have got to stop putting Kellyanne on your shows. All she does is lie. If you don’t give her a platform, she has nowhere to lie. It’s like that old saying, if a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree? I’m not suggesting she gets hurt. Just stuck. Stuck under a tree.”

Wolf also skewered Sarah Huckabee Sanders as the press secretary sat just a few seats away from her onstage. Wolf compared Sanders to Aunt Lydia — a fearsome character from the dystopian Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale who reeducates women into subjugation and enforces strict punishment on them — and drew attention to the press secretary’s lying, saying she was an “Uncle Tom for white women.”

Here’s what Wolf said:

We are graced with Sarah’s presence tonight. I have to say I’m a little star-struck. I love you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale. Mike Pence, if you haven’t seen it, you would love it. Every time Sarah steps up to the podium, I get excited, because I’m not really sure what we’re going to get — you know, a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. “It’s shirts and skins, and this time don’t be such a little bitch, Jim Acosta!” I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies. And I’m never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you know? Is it Sarah Sanders, is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is it Cousin Huckabee, is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? Like, what’s Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women? Oh, I know. Aunt Coulter.

Michelle Wolf destroys Sarah Huckabee Sanders at #WHCD pic.twitter.com/pKGSSOCu8d — Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 29, 2018

There was backlash — and backlash to the backlash

Some immediately argued that Wolf went too far. “That [Sanders] sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive,” the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman wrote.

That @PressSec sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive. — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 29, 2018

“Lots of critics but she has always been decent and professional to me — if not entirely forthcoming (and I don’t expect any press secretary to be!),” wrote Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post.

Lot of critics but she has always been decent and professional to me -- if not entirely forthcoming (and I don't expect any press secretary to be!) https://t.co/bM6Efz2Xmf — Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 29, 2018

President Donald Trump, who for the second consecutive year did not attend the dinner, assailed Wolf and the event in a series of tweets. On Sunday, he said that the dinner was a very “big boring bust” and that the “so-called comedian really ‘bombed.’” On Monday, he declared the event “DEAD as we know it.”

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.” @greggutfeld should host next year! @PeteHegseth — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 29, 2018

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it. This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2018

And some journalists complained that the monologue would reinforce stereotypes about the media:

If the #WHCD dinner did anything tonight, it made the chasm between journalists and those who don't trust us, even wider. And those of us based in the red states who work hard every day to prove our objectivity will have to deal with it. — Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) April 29, 2018

Wolf fired back at all of this, including a response to Haberman:

Hey mags! All these jokes were about her despicable behavior. Sounds like you have some thoughts about her looks though? https://t.co/JRzzvhBuey — Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) April 29, 2018

She also thanked former White House press secretary Sean Spicer for his assessment the dinner was a “disgrace.”

On Sunday morning, Wolf responded to those saying she was insulting Huckabee Sanders’s looks.

Why are you guys making this about Sarah’s looks? I said she burns facts and uses the ash to create a *perfect* smoky eye. I complimented her eye makeup and her ingenuity of materials. https://t.co/slII9TYdYx — Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) April 29, 2018

White House Correspondents’ Association president Margaret Talev on Sunday released a statement on Wolf’s monologue. “Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting, and scholarship winners, not to divide people,” she said. She said Wolf’s speech was “not in the spirit of that mission.”

Wolf responded on Instagram with a picture of herself from Saturday evening captioned, “Not in the spirit of the mission.”

Not in the spirit of the mission. A post shared by Michelle Wolf (@michelleisawolf) on Apr 29, 2018 at 9:52pm PDT

Somebody always gets mad about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner jokes

The correspondents’ dinner entertainer nearly always manages to make someone mad. Remember 2016, when Larry Wilmore called former President Barack Obama “my nigga?” Or 2011, when Obama’s and Seth Meyers’s jokes about then-reality TV star and birther Donald Trump were so cutting they allegedly spurred him to run for office?

Hasan Minhaj, a senior correspondent on the Daily Show who performed at last year’s Correspondents’ Dinner, caused a stir as well. In an interview with former US attorney Preet Bharara at a conference in Manhattan on Thursday, Minhaj talked about one joke — where he repeated over and over that he did “not see Steve Bannon” until he arrived at “Nazi Steve Bannon” — that “a lot of people online … did not like.”

He said he doesn’t regret it. “My rule is I will make fun of your character over things you can control, so I will be cutting, not cruel,” he said in a sit-down at the CAFE Change Summit, which Bharara hosted.

In 2006, Stephen Colbert showed at the White House Correspondents Dinner in character and roasted the Bush administration. In the ballroom, the monologue generated a lot of awkward silences and nervous laughter. But online, it went viral. YouTube, still new at the time, meant that everyone could watch Colbert’s routine, and some of the jokes that landed with a thud in the room were the ones that people outside it saw as speaking truth to power.

A similar debate is now playing out around with Wolf’s speech.

“They call you liars. They call Mexicans rapists. They call Muslims murderers. They support white supremacists. But someone calls them out on what they do, & suddenly they’re heroes for not walking out,” actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani replied to Haberman’s tweet.

They call you liars. They call Mexicans rapists. They call Muslims murderers. They support white supremacists. But someone calls them out on what they do, & suddenly they’re heroes for not walking out. https://t.co/B9aT7moy2C — Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) April 29, 2018

Former Barack Obama aide and Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau pointed out Wolf mentioned the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan — and those remarks were largely ignored.

Comedian ends comedy dinner by saying that Flint still doesn’t have clean water, an attempt to point out Washington’s continued neglect of people who need help.



Washington responds with a rigorous debate about the tone and civility of the comedian’s jokes.



Perfect. — Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 29, 2018

“I wasn’t expecting this level [of controversy], but I’m also not disappointed there’s this level,” Wolf told NPR. “I knew what I was doing going in.”

The whole affair has turned into another Trump-driven outrage cycle, focusing plenty of energy and attention on something relatively trivial. It’s a dynamic Wolf alluded to in one of her most cutting lines, aimed not at the administration but at the journalists in the room:

“You pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him,” she said. “I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric. But he has helped you. … You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.”