Here’s another thing getting cut in Washington: comedy.
The White House Correspondents’ Association said on Saturday that it canceled a planned performance by Amber Ruffin, the actress and talk-show host, at its annual black-tie dinner on April 26.
A monologue by a featured comedian is usually the highlight of the journalists’ soiree. Memorable performances by Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, among other stars, have turned into touchstones of political satire.
But amid rocky relations between President Trump and the White House press corps — and numerous efforts by the administration to undermine the news media — the correspondents’ group decided to go in a different direction.
“The W.H.C.A. board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year,” the association’s president, Eugene Daniels, wrote to members on Saturday. “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.”
Representatives of Ms. Ruffin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The announcement was a sharp break from the group’s position in early February, when it trumpeted Ms. Ruffin’s comedic style as “the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”
“She has the ability to walk the line between blistering commentary and humor all while provoking her audience to think about the important issues of the day,” Mr. Daniels said in a news release. “I’m thrilled and honored she said yes.”
In the weeks since, Mr. Daniels and his fellow board members at the correspondents’ association have become embroiled in various standoffs with the administration. The White House barred Associated Press journalists from attending certain official events and began picking and choosing which news outlets were allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, breaking from decades of precedent.
On Thursday, Ms. Ruffin made critical comments about the Trump White House during an appearance on a Daily Beast podcast, at one point referring to the administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers.” She also said that the correspondents’ association had encouraged her to be evenhanded in her satire. “They were like, ‘You need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides,’” Ms. Ruffin said, “and I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be freaking doing that, dude. Under no circumstances.’”
Her comments set off an angry response from a deputy White House chief of staff, Taylor Budowich, who wrote on X, “What kind of responsible, sensible journalist would attend something like this?” On Saturday, after Ms. Ruffin was dropped, Mr. Budowich referred to the association’s statement as “pathetic.”
In 2017, Mr. Trump became the first president to skip the dinner since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was incapacitated after an assassination attempt (although Mr. Reagan called in to the event from his hospital room). Mr. Trump never attended the dinner during his first term.
In 2019, the correspondents’ association opted against a comedian for the first time in 15 years and instead booked Ron Chernow, a historian and biographer, who spoke on the First Amendment.
On Saturday, Mr. Daniels, who recently joined MSNBC as a correspondent, said he had spent the last two weeks “planning a re-envisioning of our dinner tradition for this year.” He did not announce an alternative speaker, but promised an evening focused on honoring “journalistic excellence and a robust, independent media covering the most powerful office in the world.”
Julia Jacobs contributed reporting.
