The president is not exactly fond of his critics. He incessantly takes the opportunity of criticism against him and/or his administration to rant and rave as if there’s some kind of conspiracy against him, and indeed, sometimes he’s explicit in that effect and makes outlandish claims that can be easily disproved.
The aftermath of this past weekend’s annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is no different. The dinner was the second in a row that the president has broken with tradition and skipped, but that’s not going to stop him from weighing in on the event on Twitter anyway.
This Monday morning, he got on social media and proclaimed the annual event to be “DEAD” writing:
‘The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it. This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!’
Thankfully, the president is no the final authority when it comes to what’s dead or not, no matter how passionately he proclaims otherwise.
The controversy that the president is capitalizing on is based largely on the jokes that this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner host comedienne Michelle Wolf told. She has faced harsh criticism for incorporating the White House press secretary’s appearance into her routine, although she’s insisted that criticizing Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ appearance was not the point of her remarks.
Even still, that defense hasn’t kept her from facing widespread criticism over the tone with which she took the Trump administration to task this past weekend.
Remember, it’s not Wolf who is credibly accused of perpetrating sexual misconduct against numerous women and has peddled sexism and bigotry on a whole host of well documented occasions. The person that description does apply to is President Donald Trump, and yet even still, Wolf is the one facing the criticism anyway.
She has even faced criticism from the White House Correspondents’ Association itself, which called her routine “not in the spirit of [our] mission” after facing an apparent round of complaints.
#WHCA Statement to Members on Annual Dinner pic.twitter.com/8DKoHNxpNi
— WHCA (@whca) April 30, 2018
The president’s Monday complaint against the WHCD — which uses the Wolf controversy as an opportunity to attack the media as a whole — is not his first.
Late Sunday night, the president wrote, in part:
‘The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it… Put Dinner to rest, or start over!’
Again, thankfully the president is not the final arbiter of what should be put to rest or not.
The whole incident calls to mind the president railing against Saturday Night Live and saying the show should be cancelled after Alec Baldwin performed a biting impression of him.
He has never been keen on accepting harsh criticism, but that does not mean he’s not hell bent on dishing it out, as he did at a rally held Saturday night at the same time as the WHCD in Washington Township, Michigan. It was the second year in a row that he held a rally at the same time as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Check out Twitter’s response to some of the president’s latest Twitter-ranting below.
Featured Image via Chris Kleponis-Pool/ Getty Images
