Margaret Talev, the senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg and the president of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), released a statement in which she said that Wolf’s monologue was “not in the spirit” of the WHCA’s “common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honouring civility”.

However, many others have defended Wolf, pointing out that she was criticising Huckabee Sanders for her character, not her appearance. As press secretary, Huckabee Sanders is one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders and is known for dissembling and twisting the truth. This suggests that Wolf’s reference to Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale was political, not aesthetic: in THT, the character of Aunt Lydia tortures and brainwashes other women into subservience to a violent patriarchal regime.

Others observed that President Trump is notorious for making cruel remarks and attacking women for their looks – making it hypocritical for his supporters to turn around and criticise Wolf for doing the same.

This is why comedian Michelle Wolf has caused such a controversy in the US