Michelle Wolf, the comedian whose no-holds-barred speech at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner drew polarized reviews, bashed the organization behind the event on Monday over its choice for next year’s speaker.
The White House Correspondents’ Association announced earlier Monday that Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow would address the glitzy annual gathering of White House reporters and presidential officials in 2019.
Chernow’s selection as speaker marks the first time in 16 years that the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner will not feature a comedian.
“The [WHCA] are cowards,” Wolf tweeted in response. “The media is complicit. And I couldn’t be prouder.”
Wolf did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for further comment about the WHCA’s choice of speaker.
Wolf’s remarks at the 2018 dinner, held on April 28 at the Washington Hilton, set the internet and cable news networks ablaze, with some accusing the comedian of making inappropriate jokes.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the target of one such controversial joke, in which Wolf likened her to a macho softball coach. Critics claimed she was mocking Sanders’ physical appearance, but Wolf hit back at those accusations, stating that the “jokes were about her despicable behavior.”
Following backlash from some lawmakers and right-wing commentators, the WHCA essentially threw Wolf under the bus by issuing a statement that her “monologue was not in the spirit” of what the organization hoped would be a “unifying message.”
Journalists were quick to remind the group that the media’s role is to hold people in power accountable and that bashing Wolf actually contradicted the WHCA’s free press mission.