"People should be free to speak but held accountable for it," former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said of Michelle Wolf's routine at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images Huckabee: WHCD taught me ‘why eating Tide Pods is popular’

Mike Huckabee says he learned something at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, but it's probably not what Michelle Wolf had in mind.

"After seeing the young female hired to verbally bully anyone who worked for @realDonaldTrump I now understand why eating Tide Pods is popular," the former Arkansas governor wrote on Twitter, referring to an online meme about the detergent-filled packets appearing edible.


"That level of vulgarity is best handled with a mouth washed out w/ soap," Huckabee wrote.

Huckabee, whose daughter, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, bore the brunt of some of the night's harshest lines, said the dinner intended to honor the First Amendment turned into a night of "bullying, vulgarity, and hate" by Wolf, the comedian who headlined the event.

"@PressSec handled it professionally but I pray her kids never see that. I pray more they never bully another person like that," Huckabee wrote on Twitter.

Wolf laced into Sanders, who was seated just feet away, asking "what's Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?" and mocking her performances in the White House briefing room.

Some journalists who cover the White House said Wolf went too far, and some critics have demanded the association apologize. WHCA President Margaret Talev, a Bloomberg reporter, told POLITICO that some of the jokes made her "uncomfortable," but she stressed later on CNN that comedians at the yearly event are provocative and that their words are protected by the First Amendment too.

Huckabee, however, said the evening illustrated why many Americans distrust the press.

"Those who think that the tasteless classless bullying at the WHCD was an example of the 1st Amendment should never condemn bullying, bigoted comments, racist bile or hate speech," he wrote on Twitter. "People should be free to speak but held accountable for it."

