This is another thing that will be cut in Washington: Comedy.
The White House Correspondents Association said on Saturday it cancelled a planned performance by actress and talk show host Amber Ruffin at the annual Black Tie Dinner on April 26th.
Monologues by popular comedians are usually the highlight of journalists' pay. Memorable performances by Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers have transformed into a touchstone of political satire, among other stars.
But amidst the rocky relationship between President Trump and the White House press corps, and many efforts by the administration to undermine the news media, a group of correspondents has decided to go in a different direction.
“The WHCA Committee has unanimously decided that it will no longer showcase comedy performances this year,” association President Eugene Daniels wrote to members on Saturday. “In this consequential moment of journalism, I don't focus on the politics of division, but rather on awarding outstanding work to my colleagues and providing scholarships and guidance to the next generation of journalists.”
Ruffin's representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The announcement was a sharp break from the group's position in early February. This trumpeted Ruffin's comedy style as “an ideal fit for this current political and cultural environment.”
“She has the ability to walk the line between ferocious commentary and humor, but she challenges the audience to think about the key issues of the day,” Daniels said in a news release. “I'm happy that she said yes.”
In the following weeks, Daniels and his fellow board members of the Correspondents Association were caught up in various standoffs with the administration. The White House has banned Associated Press journalists from participating in certain official events, and has begun to break in from decades of precedents to select and select news that have been allowed to join the president's press pool.
On Thursday, Ruffin made critical comments about the Trump White House when he appeared on the Daily Beast Podcast at one point called “a kind of murderer.” She also said the correspondents' association encouraged them to be equalized with her satire. “They said, 'You need to be equal and make sure you give it to both sides,'” Ruffin said, “And I'm not going to do that.
Her comments sparked an angry response from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budwich. Taylor Budwich called the association's statement “what responsible, wise journalists would attend something like this?” After Ms. Ruffin was dropped on Saturday, Budwich called the association's statement “pathetic.”
In 2017, Trump became the first president to skip dinner since 1981 when Ronald Reagan was neutralised after an attempted assassination (although Reagan called the event from his hospital room). Trump never attended dinner during his first term.
In 2019, the Correspondents Society opposed comedians for the first time in 15 years, booking historian and biographer Ron Chernow instead.
On Saturday, Daniels, who recently joined MSNBC as a correspondent, said the past two weeks are “planning to reconstruct this year's dinner tradition.” He didn't announce another speaker, but he promised an evening focused on celebrating “journalistic excellence and a robust, independent media covering the world's most powerful offices.”
Julia Jacobs contributed to the report.
