Chasing The Last Laugh

One year after earning the disdain of Republicans, journalists and a few liberal women, Michelle Wolf is ready to do it again—and maybe help the country too

- Stephen Rodrick

Michelle Wolf is not a fan of Donald Trump humor. She thinks it’s all a bit hacky. “I personally hate Trump jokes,” says Wolf, who a year ago vowed to burn down the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and then did so in such definitive fashion nothing was left except scorched tuxedos. She doubles down: “I have not heard a good Trump joke in years.”

Alas, on a recent frozen night at New York’s legendary Comedy Cellar, three of the four comedians who take the stage before Wolf unleash Trump jokes. They are all lame. Then Wolf makes her way to the mike through a maze of tables occupied by drunk accountants and couples on first dates. She’s wearing blue jeans, a gray sweater and a muted pair of Nikes. (The long-distance runner has become known for performing in glam high-topped sneaks, her collection being her concession to consumerism.) Her trademark voluminous curly red hair—which Wolf once described on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah as a hybrid of classic Annie and modern African American Annie—has been straightened.

Wolf is working on new material, which means her routine is semi-embargoed. Suffice it to say, there are no Trump jokes. Her 2017 HBO special, Nice Lady, featured bits on period farts, the impossibility of the modern woman having it all and a theory that men’s testicles resemble a goblin’s coin purse. Her new material is in the same unfiltered vein.

At one point she seems to suggest — in a high-pitched voice she jokes often attracts stray dogs — that men don’t need to worry about the women’s movement because women have a tendency to devour their own. For anyone who paid attention to the aftermath of Wolf’s Correspondents’ Dinner set, it’s obvious why sharing this is not in breach of the embargo.