Amber Ruffin fires back after WHCA cancellation

The press exists to 'be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners,' she jokes on Late Night

Over the weekend, the White House Correspondents’ Association announced that comedian Amber Ruffin would no longer be performing at its annual dinner on April 26. It marked a historic low for the WHCA, which has never publicly announced an entertainer—then rescinded the booking because of political pressure from the White House.

Ruffin stayed mum about the cancellation until Monday, when she appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers in a satirical bit that captured the absurdity of the current media environment.

Meyers made a brief mention of the controversy near the end of his monologue, then moved onto a story about a bodega robber in Brooklyn, when Ruffin suddenly interrupted to offer a different perspective on the crime.

“If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides,” she said. “When bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully. When you watch The Sound of Music, you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”

“You mean the Nazis?” Meyers asked.

“Calling them that is so one-sided,” Ruffin replied.

On Friday, Ruffin believed the press existed to report on the news and call out bad behavior when it happened. Over the weekend, she learned the truth:

“We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners.”

Another truth that became clear over the weekend? Cancel culture is alive and well—if you’re not a white guy.

The debacle began Saturday afternoon, when WHCA president Eugene Daniels sent an email informing its members that the board had unanimously decided against featuring a comedic performer at this year’s event. Trump, who skipped the dinner throughout his first term, is not expected to attend this year either.

“At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division, but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists,” said Daniels, a former Politico reporter and soon-to-be-host on MSNBC, in the email.

Which is quite a change of tune since early February, when Daniels said Ruffin had been tapped because her “unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”

“This dinner is about centering the importance of a functioning democracy,” read the effusive statement announcing Ruffin as the headliner at the event. “Amber is the type of entertainer who understands both the significance of that mission as well as the mechanics of power in this country.”

What changed so dramatically in the last two months—other than the WHCA’s willingness to stand up to the Trump administration? Why is Ruffin’s style of “blistering commentary,” as the original press release put it, suddenly so dangerous?

Ruffin has been a writer and performer on Late Night since its launch in 2014, hosted her own late-night program The Amber Ruffin Show, on Peacock for two years, and also appears on the weekly panel show Have I Got News For You on CNN. Her political point of view, and the fact that she is hardly a MAGA supporter, is about as secret as the contents of the Houthi PC small group chat.

But Saturday’s announcement came amid escalating tension with the White House over the presidential press pool and the seating arrangements in the briefing room.

In what is surely not a coincidence, a day before Ruffin’s appearance was canceled, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich slammed Ruffin on X as a “2nd rate comedian” and posted a clip from a recent podcast in which Ruffin referred to the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers.”

In the interview, Ruffin also said she was ignoring pressure to skewer both sides in her set. “It’s bonkers that we are still acting like things are normal,” he said.

Ruffin is an accomplished, Emmy- and Tony-nominated writer and performer who has helped bring desperately-needed diversity to the historically very white, very male ranks of late night TV. She has played an integral part in some of Late Night’s funniest recurring segments including “Amber Says What?,” in which she rounds up head-scratching news—she will have plenty of fodder for the bit if she chooses to do it this week—and “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell, in which she and fellow writer Jenny Hagel deliver punchlines, often about race, gender, or sexual identity, that would be inappropriate coming from a straight white man. (Sample joke: “Black Superman is just like white Superman, except he has two other jobs.”)

The irony is that Ruffin has become a target of Trump’s ire—and the WHCA’s capitulation—precisely because, as a Black woman, there are jokes they don’t want her to tell. Nothing gets under Trump’s skin faster than getting called out by a woman, especially a woman of color. (See: his bizarre, ruffled debate performance against Kamala Harris.)

Controversy is nothing new to the WHCA dinner. Richard Nixon skipped the event several times throughout his presidency, denouncing the WHCA as “a drunken group, crude and terribly cruel.”

In 2006, Stephen Colbert delivered a scathing monologue targeting George W. Bush and the credulous DC press corps. The WHCA invited the tepid impressionist Rich Little to perform the following year. At the event in 2011, Seth Meyers and Barack Obama made numerous jokes about Trump, who was still hosting The Apprentice at that point but making headlines for relentlessly fanning the racist birther conspiracy theory.

Trump’s presidency ushered in a new era of crisis for the “nerd prom.” In 2019, Sarah Huckabee Sanders attended in his stead. Comedian Michelle Wolf faced vicious backlash for joking about the press secretary’s smokey eye makeup and propensity for clouding the truth. The next year, the WHCA opted to skip the comedy and asked historian Ron Chernow to speak instead.

What is both new and especially egregious about the Ruffin cancellation is the fact that the WHCA is rescinding an invitation to an entertainer who has already been announced—and doing so in a transparent attempt to appease the administration, which has spent the last month waging war on cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian.

It is sadly predictable that Trump’s minions would target Ruffin, a Black woman who has spoken out—with insight and humor—about her experiences with racism. What’s even sadder is the WHCA caving under less pressure than it would take to break a balsa wood bridge at the 5th grade science fair.

Ruffin’s literal cancellation contrasts starkly with the umpteen chances given to guys like Tony Hinchcliffe, the roast comic who riled up the audience at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally by referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” and has recently signed a deal to bring three—yes, three—specials to Netflix.

Then there’s Morgan Wallen, the controversy-prone country music star who abruptly walked off Saturday Night Live this weekend as the credits were still rolling, then posted a picture of a private plane on Instagram with the caption “Get me to God’s country,” as if he were fleeing an oppressive regime. The snowflake routine was especially galling given Wallen’s history of questionable behavior: his first scheduled performance on SNL in October 2020 was canceled because he flagrantly violated the show’s COVID safety protocols. He was invited back just two months later. In 2021, he was caught using the N-word in a video recorded by a neighbor. Last year, he threw a chair off the roof of a six-story Nashville bar, nearly hit two police officers, and was put on probation for two years.

As far as I know, Ruffin has never thrown a chair off a roof. Or made anti-semitic jokes at an event where a presidential candidate was about to speak. But apparently using hyperbolic language to describe the villainy of the Trump administration is plenty motivation to get you canceled—if you’re a Black woman.

In his email to WHCA members, Daniels said he was now trying to “re-envision” this year’s dinner, vowing it will be “a celebration of the foundational American value of a free and independent press.”

It’s unclear what kind of performer could command the stage at the Washington Hilton and keep 2500 or so nerd prom attendees amused—but not offended—while they nosh on rubber chicken. Perhaps a mime could work; if they can’t speak, they can’t say anything offensive. Better yet, maybe the WHCA can convince Trump to be the headliner. He can stand onstage for 40 minutes, swaying back and forth to “Ave Maria” and “Y.M.C.A.” It won’t be funny. It certainly won’t be pretty. But at least there will be no illusions about who’s running the show.