For anyone who missed it last night, comedian Michelle Wolf's performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where she jabbed at everyone from White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to the media, to Trump and the rest of his administration, to you name it, had the right wing worked into a tizzy last night, two of whom participated in a completely ridiculous panel discussion on CNN shortly after her bit.
Keith Boykin and Tiffany Cross made some great points, but GOP strategist and never-Trumper Rick Wilson may have had the line of the night with his response. Looks like he was channeling our own Nicole Belle.
After Trump booster Paris Dennard carried on about how Trump was the real “winner” last night for having another one of his unhinged rallies for his adoring fans rather than attending the WHCD, Democratic strategist Keith Boykin called out the critics and the ridiculous assertion that a comedian should be held to a higher standard than the president of the United States. As Boykin noted, Trump's out golfing every week, and promoting his golf clubs and businesses like a kleptocrat, constantly says “some of the most offensive things that any president has ever said about other people,” has lied about Ted Cruz's father, promoted birtherism for years and mocked a disabled reporter, and “is the epitome of all of those things you said Michelle Wolf shouldn't be saying.”
After the other Trump supporter on the panel, Carrie Sheffield started whining about the choice of Wolf, saying “she was the comedian that was handpicked, hand selected by the White House Correspondents' Dinner to address this esteemed group that's supposed to be representing the American people,” Rick Wilson had the perfect response.
WILSON: If Michelle needs to spin her way out of this, she needs to say three magical words which we know are a pass – “locker room talk.” Because locker room talk excuses all the other rhetoric in the world.
Sheffield responded by attacking the so-called “Hollywood elite” for moving too far to the left and somehow being responsible for dividing the country, which, as one of the other panel members, Tiffany Cross pointed out, is patently ridiculous.
CROSS: What he embodies is centuries of systemic racism he celebrates and highlights, and the fact that we're sitting here saying that Michelle Wolf is the person who divides this country when Sarah Huckabee Sanders comes to that podium and apologies for him calling, or doesn't apologize rather, excuses him for him calling Nazis “good people on both sides” – as a woman I was certainly offended when talked about grabbing women by their private parts.
As a woman, as a person of color, as an American, as a human being, I am ashamed of what this president says. And the fact that we're on this panel dissecting what Michelle Wolf said, to Keith's point, it is ridiculous to make that false equivalency. She is not the person dividing this country, the president of the United States is. And I think anybody in that administration who wasn't going to be offended short of Roseanne Barr being the comedian tonight, they were going to have a problem with anything, because truth telling to this administration is offensive, which is ridiculous.
You can watch Wolf's entire routine below: