The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) did an abrupt about-face over the weekend and canceled an appearance by an anti-Trump comedian at its upcoming dinner.
Amber Ruffin had been announced as the headliner for the annual WHCA dinner scheduled for April 26, and she was promoting the gig as recently as Thursday. While Ruffin is known for her criticism of Donald Trump, she appears to have gone too far even for WHCA and they pulled the plug.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of Undercurrents on UnHerd, and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, to discuss the cancellation and how WHCA has fallen.
WHCA Dinner History
The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is meant to serve as a fundraiser for the organization, which claims to support the reporters that cover the executive branch, put on events to educate the public about the First Amendment and role of a free press, and award scholarships to help the next generation of journalists.
Historically, the dinner was attended by members of WHCA, select guests, the president of the United States, and members of the administration as a way to honor the press. A comedian was added to the mix in the early 2000s to roast both the commander in chief and media, and the guest list has gotten considerably starrier in recent years with news organizations inviting celebrities.
Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president had attended at least one WHCA dinner until Trump’s first term. He did not attend the event in 2017, 2018, or 2019 (the 2020 event was cancelled due to COVID) and is expected to skip again this year.
The ‘Murderers’ Controversy
On Saturday, WHCA President Eugene Daniels announced the board unanimously decided to drop Ruffin from the program as part of a “re-envisioning” of the tradition. “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,” he wrote in a memo.
The decision came just one day after White House deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel Taylor Budowich criticized the selection of Ruffin after her comments about the administration on The Daily Beast Podcast hosted by Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee.
Ruffin called Trump and his team “murderers,” who want to “feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way because you’re not.” She also said she was told to “give it to both sides” in her routine but refused. “I was like, there is no way I am going to be frickin doing that, dude,” she said. “Under no circumstances.”
This is not the first time Ruffin has made her feelings about the administration known. When she was announced as the headliner back in February, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she planned to target Trump in her performance and hoped he wouldn’t attend. “I don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him,” she said at the time.
Ruffin, who previously hosted a late-night show on Peacock, is part of the CNN Saturday night program Have I Got News for You, and the comedic value of her work has been questioned. “[She] is just such a typical leftist. It’s not funny. It’s political. It’s ripping Trump. She’s looking for applause, not laughs,” Megyn noted. “And so Eugene Daniels was like, ‘Right on. That’s our girl. Let’s do this’… She then goes on a media tour promoting her gig, and the media tour gets her fired.”
‘Orgy of Elitism’
But what Megyn took even bigger issue with was the sanctimonious tone of Daniels’ memo. “They really want to honor the White House reporters who left it all on the playing field this year. Like how they covered the Biden mental infirmity so closely and explosively and blew the lid off, right? Oh, wait, no, that never happened,” she explained. “Will that award be given in April for all the people who completely blew it and, instead of exposing that, ran cover for him? Because that happened over the past 12 months since their last big gala.”
Johnson agreed. “There is a vibe shift in [Washington, D.C.], and this is part of it, which is that it now hurts you to have some lunatic comedian appearing at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner,” she shared. “And rather than be honest about that and say this is not an appropriate entertainer for our dinner, because she said X, Y, and Z… they are lying to their audience about the real reason for this shift.”
In Jashinsky’s view, the WHCA created their own mess. “They are just in these insane bubbles where they think the only person who could do a good job… is Amber Ruffin, who is not funny. It’s like they haven’t evolved since 2017 with the rest of the country, even though Donald Trump was just elected again with an even higher margin in the Electoral College,” she explained. “They are completely out of touch. They were caught in it.”
She also had a pro trip. “This is always what the White House Correspondents Association Dinners should have been. [If] they want to claim it is a fundraiser… for journalism… then stop making it a Hollywood spectacle and just fundraise,” Jashinsky added. “Stop acting like this is some great thing for the country when it is actually just an orgy of elitism.”
Megyn, meanwhile, had a message for her fellow journalists. “I was invited to this shindig, and – as I have for every year over the past 10 – I declined to go,” she concluded. “And I urge anybody with an ego and self respect to say, ‘No, not going to that.'”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky and Johnson by tuning in to episode 1,038 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.