Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — In her first interview since she took the podium at the White House Correspondents’ dinner this weekend, Michelle Wolf defended her scathing jokes about politicians, the media and the press secretary, saying, “I wouldn’t change a single word that I said.”
Over the weekend, Wolf received both support and backlash on social media for not holding back when joking about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Donald Trump and more Saturday night.
Some White House correspondents demanded she apologize to Sanders, while comedians like Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel said Wolf was funny and that the dinner was supposed to be a roast.
In a wide-ranging interview with NPR’s “Fresh Air,” Wolf talked about her monologue.
“I wouldn’t change a single word that I said,” she explained. “I’m very happy with what I said and I’m glad I stuck to my guns.”
But Wolf said she wasn’t expecting this kind of backlash, either.
“I’m also not disappointed there’s this level. I knew what I was doing going in. I wanted to do something different. I didn’t want to cater to the room. I wanted to cater to the outside audience and not betray my brand of comedy,” she added. “A friend of mine who helped me write, he gave me a note before I went on, which I kept with me, which was, ‘Be true to yourself. Never apologize. Burn it to the ground.'”
In fact, Wolf believes when she was hired for the gig, they may have underestimated her bite because of her gender.
“I think sometimes they look at a woman and they think ‘Oh, she’ll be nice,’ and if you’ve seen any of my comedy you know that I don’t – I’m not. I don’t pull punches. I’m not afraid to talk about things. And I don’t think they expected that from me,” she said.
As for the calls for Wolf to apologize to Sanders for allegedly attacking her appearance, she stands by her account that she never did such a thing.
“If there [are] two people that I actually made fun of their looks on Saturday it was Mitch McConnell and Chris Christie and no one is jumping to their defense,” she said. “I made fun of Mitch McConnell’s neck and I did a small jab at Chris Christie’s weight and no one is jumping to their defense.”
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