Michelle Wolf defends Samantha Bee, says Ivanka is ‘useless’

Michelle Wolf, the host of a Netflix series whose appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner stoked controversy this spring, is defending Samantha Bee’s comments about Ivanka Trump in a new interview.

Wolf, whose cutting remarks about White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Saners led to a days-long controversy, called Ivanka Trump “useless” and “fair game” in the interview with the Daily Beast.

“I mean, Ivanka is part of the Trump administration. She’s fair game. And she is useless. So I think it’s very fair to point out that she’s doing a terrible job,” Wolf said in the interview.

Earlier this month, Bee was criticized for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—” during a segment on her show about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) separating children from their parents.

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Bee later apologized for the comment and for distracting the public from “more important issues.”

“I should have known that a potty-mouth insult would be inherently more interesting to them [news media] than juvenile immigration policy,” she continued. “I would do anything to help those kids. I hate that this distracted from them. So to them, I am also sorry.”

Wolf said that most people likely didn’t know what joke the comment was in or that it was part of remarks about ICE.

“They probably just saw the headline: ‘Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a feckless c—.’ They don’t know it was a bit about ICE, and they may not even know that Ivanka posted that picture or really so much about that,” Wolf said.

“I think there’s a distraction method of ‘Oh, if we talk about this part of something then people won’t focus on the actual part of substance,’” Wolf also noted.

Plenty of comedians came to Wolf’s defense after she was lambasted by allies of Trump and a number of members of the press for her remarks about Sanders, which included a joke about the press secretary burning facts to create a “perfect smokey eye.” 

Colleagues of Bee have also supported the TBS host since controversy broke out over her remarks about Ivanka Trump, though there also have been reports of advertisers distancing themselves from her show.