The telltale giveaway in Donald Trump’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner rant
After skipping out on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night and instead holding a pity-party rally for himself several states away, Donald Trump spent Sunday ranting about how the dinner went. He began complaining about comedian Michelle Wolf’s performance early on Sunday morning, and fifteen hours later, he was still ranting about her. Somewhere in there was a telltale giveaway.
Here are Trump’s two tweets. See if you can spot what’s conspicuously missing from them both:
1) While Washington, Michigan, was a big success, Washington, D.C., just didn’t work. Everyone is talking about the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner was a very big, boring bust…the so-called comedian really “bombed.”
2) The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a failure last year, but this year was an embarrassment to everyone associated with it. 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!
Sure, he never mentioned Michelle Wolf’s name, but that’s probably only because he doesn’t know her name. Here’s what he left out that would have made his argument much stronger: an actual denial of anything specific she said. There was no attempt at defending his Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took the brunt of it. Why? Because he can’t. Wolf focused on the fact that Huckabee Sanders constantly lies about Trump. He can’t push back against that, because it’s true.
Donald Trump also couldn’t push back against the jokes that Michelle Wolf made about him, because they were primarily focused on what we all know to be true: his net worth is a small fraction of what he claims, if it isn’t in outright negative territory. Trump was afraid to even bother refuting that one, for fear of bringing more attention to it. Trump didn’t like the jokes about him and his staff, but he made no effort at refuting the accuracy of those jokes.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report