Fox News reporter Ed Henry said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders deserves an apology after comedian Michelle Wolf roasted her at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night.
Appearing on “Fox and Friends” Sunday morning, Henry called Wolf “mean, hateful and vile,” especially compared to President Donald Trump at the rally he held in Michigan to vie for attention with the dinner.
“It was disgusting, despicable,” Henry, the association’s former president, said of Wolf’s performance. “Sarah Sanders should get an apology from the White House Correspondents’ Association... What a contrast to what the president was doing [at the rally], talking about issues that people actually care about.”
Rather than attend the dinner ― a tradition among former presidents ― Trump hosted a campaign-style rally for his supporters in which he threatened to close down the federal government if his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border did not get funded.
Trump also took aim at Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who led the fight against the president’s failed effort to install White House physician Ronny Jackson as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Trump said he knew “things about Tester that I could say... and if I said them, he’d never be elected again.”
Trump didn’t offer any details, and Henry didn’t mention these parts of Trump’s remarks in his Sunday comments. Instead, he said of Huckabee Sanders that the association “invited her to be the president’s representative. We invited her to dinner, to our event, and we treated her like dirt. It was disgusting; I’m actually getting more angry just thinking about it.”
Wolf took aim at Sanders during her routine, joking about the press secretary spewing lies and “burning facts” to “create the perfect smokey eye.”
“Maybe she’s born with it,” Wolf said. “Maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
Henry was not the only high-profile member of the media to call on Wolf to apologize to Sanders. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell tweeted that the press secretary was “grossly insulted” by Wolf and is owed an apology.
This story has been updated with Andrea Mitchell’s reaction.