The virulently anti-Trump comedian who was set to headline the White House Correspondents Association dinner, Amber Ruffin, says she was dropped for “talking s–” about the Trump administration.Speaking from her regular perch on CNN’s version of “Have I Got News For You” this weekend, Ms. Ruffinand was asked about the association’s decision to drop her from the event.Host Roy Wood Jr. said, “Amber, following the tradition of Craig from ‘Friday,’ was fired on her day off. And she was uninvited from the White House Correspondents Dinner when she said that she intended to make fun of the current administration.”“Amber, do you think you lost the gig because you said too early what you were going to do about going in on Republicans?” he asked. Ms. Ruffin responded, “I mean, oh, my God. I could f— talk for the next three hours. But what I choose to say is, it’s like, I lost the gig because I was out here talking s—. And I think it’s a good thing that I lost the gig because I wasn’t going to show up there and act all the way out.”“It’s not anyone’s fault, because when I was hired, we were like, oh, yeah, and we’ll give it to everybody. And I was like, bet. Then they started f— disappearing people to a prison in El Salvador,” she said. “They rolled back f— civil rights. So I was, like, if I make this equal, then I’m also a piece of s—. I can’t f— do that.”When Ms. Ruffin was first announced, with great fanfare, as the comedian to headline the event, the embattled head of the WHCA, MSNBC host Eugene Daniels, said she would be “roasting the most powerful people on all sides of the aisle and the journalists who cover them.”In a post on Instagram in February, Mr. Daniels said, “One huge decision is who will be the featured entertainer” for the WHCA dinner.“[Ms. Ruffin] was always at the top of my list, and I’m so thrilled and honored that she said yes!” he wrote. However, the WHCA changed course after the comedian did an interview on a podcast from the Daily Beast.“I’m not 100 percent interested in being like, ‘Ha, you’re here. Look at your stupid head. You’re burned,’” she said about her planned jokes. “I care, like, ‘You’re kind of a bunch of murderers.’ [the WHCA] were like, ‘You need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides and blah blah blah. I was like, ‘There’s no way I am going to be freaking doing that dude. Under no circumstances.’”Ms. Ruffin has long been open about her disdain for President Trump, so her comments were hardly a surprise. Yet following the Daily Beast podcast, Mr. Daniels made an about-face, released a statement that said Ms. Ruffin would no longer be headlining the dinner, nor would there be any featured comedic performance. “The WHCA board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year,” Mr. Daniels said. “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.”A deputy chief of staff at the White House, Taylor Budowich, posted on X, “No accountability at [WHCA], just a cop out statement–pathetic!”“Many WHCA members are privately pointing the finger at Eugene for making the unilateral decision to recruit and sign this garbage, hate-filled comedian,” he wrote. “Yet, they are all turning a blind eye to it publicly. It’s an indictment on how broken and useless this organization has become… so sad that such a storied and consequential group has been so quickly driven into irrelevancy. Oh well. Good riddance!”Mr. Daniels at the WHCA is currently at war with the White House over the White House’s decision to take over assigning who would be “pool” – which members of the White House press corps will be admitted to certain presidential events – which was long the province of the WHCA. The move followed the White House denying the Associated Press the right to participate in the pool because the wire service would not use the new cartographical name, “Gulf of America.”Last week, Axios reported that the White House plans to change the seating chart in the press briefing room in the West Wing. The WHCA has long controlled those seating assignments. The clubby White House press corps is now facing the prospect of key mainstream media figures such as Kaitlan Collins of CNN losing their front-row seats or perhaps not getting seats at all. The briefing room at present is packed to the gills and is standing-room only.As the WHCA fights for its life, Mr. Daniels, known for his liberal bias and who recently left Politico for a full-time job at MSNBC, is being criticized as a flawed representative for the official White House press. Indeed, the decision to pick Ms. Ruffin as a comedian and then change the format of the event comes as Mr. Daniels, who has been described as a “Kamala fanboy,” has faced criticism for his insistence to stay on as the president of the WHCA during this time of crisis.While Mr. Daniels has had harsh words for Mr. Trump, some of his colleagues have criticized him and the WHCA for, in their view, not responding forcefully enough to the White House’s moves to strip the organization of its main responsibilities. Other observers have said he’s so compromised by his overt liberal bias that the White House simply won’t negotiate with him.Mr. Daniels denies being biased. In a fawning New York Times profile last month, he said that it “doesn’t really matter who is in the Oval Office for me … My job is to find out information.”Previous WHCA dinners have featured comedians such as Stephen Colbert, Colin Jost, Jay Leno, and Trevor Noah. During President Obama’s years in the White House, the event was crammed with A-list celebrities; it was perhaps the most celebrity-studded event on the East Coast, save only for the Met Gala. The star quality plummeted during Mr. Trump’s first term, when the president refused to attend. The event became a source of intense controversy in 2018 when comedian Michelle Wolf made offensive jokes about then-Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was seated just a few feet away from her on the stage.Ms. Wolf said, “I’m never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you know? Is it Sarah Sanders, is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is it Cousin Huckabee, is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? What’s Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women? Oh, I know. Aunt Coulter.”Perhaps most famously, Ms. Wolf said, “I actually really like Sarah, I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”After that event, Mr. Trump posted on X, “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it. This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!”In 2019, a comedian did not perform at the event. Instead, historian Ron Chernow delivered remarks. During the Biden years, the president resumed attending, but the celebrity guest list was dominated by D-listers such as cast members of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” and “Vanderpump Rules” programs. Both Mr. Trump and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, will not be attending this spring’s dinner.
