The White House Correspondents’ Association has dropped plans to feature a comedian at its April 26 dinner.
Amber Ruffin had been announced as the featured entertainer.
WHCA President Eugene Daniels wrote in a letter to members today that “the WHCA board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year. 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.”
The White House has been critical of the choice of Ruffin, citing her past humor at the expense of Donald Trump. Trump is not expected to attend, and there are reports that his supporters are planning a competing event.
On Friday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich posted a Ruffin Daily Beast podcast appearance in which she was asked about who would be in attendance and whether members of the Trump administration would be there.
“It’s bonkers that we are still acting like thing are normal,” Ruffin said in the clip, while indicating that she would not engage in a kind of “both sides” humor.
Budowich wrote, “This year’s @whca dinner will be hosted by a 2nd rate comedian who is previewing the event by calling this administration ‘murderers’ who want to ‘feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, because you’re not.’”
A representative for Ruffin did not immediately return a request for comment. Ruffin hosted her own late-night talk show The Amber Ruffin Show for three seasons on Peacock. She appears on CNN’s comedy news series Have I Got News For You, and is a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers.
The WHCA has been grappling with the White House decision in February to take control of who is in the presidential press pool, ending a decades-long practice in which the non-profit determined those participants. The WHCA also has supported the Associated Press in its lawsuit against the Trump administration, after the news organization was banned from the Oval Office and other White House events because its style guidance did not change references to the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
In his note to members, Daniels wrote that the dinner would be “a celebration of the foundational American value of a free and independent press.”
“For the past couple of weeks, I have been planning a re-envisioning of our dinner tradition for this year,” Daniels wrote. “As the date nears, I will share more details of the plans in place to honor journalistic excellence and a robust, independent media covering the most powerful office in the world.”
The WHCA has a long history of inviting a comedian to perform, after the president’s schtick, in an assignment that is both high-profile and unenviable. In the podcast, Ruffin noted the difficult acoustics of the Washington Hilton ballroom, as well as the tough crowd of journalists, politicians and, in years past, Hollywood celebrities. But some of the comic performances have ruffled feathers, as happened in 2006, when Stephen Colbert performed in front of George W. Bush.
Trump skipped all of the dinners held during his first term, even though he had attended in the past. Nevertheless, administration officials did attend. In 2018, when comedian Michelle Wolf delivered scathing jokes about the Trump administration, including about then-Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was sitting on the dais. A number of those in the crowd went silent during the provocative quips.
The next year, the WHCA dropped a comedian altogether, and went with historian Ron Chernow as the featured speaker.
