Comedian Amber Ruffin said it was “a good thing” she was canceled as the host of the White House Correspondents dinner and acknowledged that her broadsides against President Trump played a role.
Ruffin hasn’t been shy about criticizing Trump, and the WHCA announced that she would host the dinner as tensions began to flare up between the White House and the association.
“I could f—king 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—t,” Ruffin reflected on CNN’s “Have I Got News For You” Saturday show.
“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,” she added. “It’s not anyone’s fault because when I was hired, we were like, ‘Oh, yeah, and we’ll give it to everybody.’”
Late last month, the WHCA board voted unanimously to pull Ruffin to avoid further antagonizing Trump. WHCA president Eugene Daniels explained that he wanted to “ensure the focus is not on the politics of division but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work.”
Trump had last attended the dinner in 2011 when he was brutally mocked by then-President Barack Obama.
During his first term, Trump skipped all WHCA annual dinners and key figures such as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have indicated they are boycotting this year’s dinner as well. This year, Trump’s allies are rumored to be considering hosting a parallel dinner to challenge the WHCA’s.
Even after initially getting named as the comedian to host the event, Ruffin continued to knock Trump publicly, including over immigration issues.
At one point, for example, she said to CNN, “don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him.”
While reflecting on losing the gig, Ruffin admitted that she would’ve had a hard time biting her tongue.
“They started f—king disappearing people to a prison in El Salvador,” she added to CNN. “They rolled back f—king civil rights. So I was, like, if I make this equal, then I’m also a piece of s—t. I can’t f—king do that.”
Last month, Ruffin told the Daily Beast she wanted to lambast the Trump administration as a “bunch of murderers” during her comedy routine and whined that she was getting asked to tone it down.
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich had raised concerns about Ruffin’s incendiary attacks against Trump.
“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,” Budowich wrote on X last month.
“What kind of responsible, sensible journalist would attend something like this? More importantly, what kind of company would sponsor such [a] hate-filled and violence-inspiring event?
The WHCA hosts the dinner to raise money for its scholarship program and various other ventures.
Trump’s team has repeatedly clashed with the WHCA. Earlier this year, the White House press team began intervening in the selection of pool reporters, a rotating group of journalists that gets special access to the president and his team.
Traditionally, the WHCA has been in charge of that selection. Additionally, the Trump administration is rumored to be considering shuffling the seating in the White House press briefing room.
The group’s dinner is slated for April 26.
