President Donald Trump called for the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to be put to “rest” after a controversial roast by comedian Michelle Wolf on Saturday night.
“The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it,” Trump tweeted late Sunday. “The filthy ‘comedian’ totally bombed (couldn’t even deliver her lines-much like the Seth Meyers weak performance).”
“Put Dinner to rest, or start over!” he concluded.
By Monday morning, Trump declared the dinner “DEAD as we know it.”
“This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for,” Trump tweeted. “FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!”
Trump did not attend the event, but sent White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. He also boycotted the dinner last year.
Wolf has drawn both condemnation and admiration for her blunt, brutal jokes about Sanders and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who also attended.
“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,” Wolf said of Sanders.
At another point, she said she mused about a tree falling on Conway, “not suggesting she get hurt, just stuck.”
Many media figures at the dinner promptly took to their keyboards to say Wolf had taken things too far, instead praising the Trump officials in the room who faced the onslaught of criticism. Others defended Wolf’s set, saying she equally targeted others in the room, including Democrats and the media.
Regardless, the president of the White House Correspondents Association distanced the group from Wolf amid the furor.
“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,” Margaret Talev, the WHCA president, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.”
Wolf defended her set against some of the critiques on social media.
This article has been updated to include additional tweets from Trump.