Amber Ruffin to No Longer Headline WHCA Dinner

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Amber Ruffin has been dropped as the headliner at this year’s White House Correspondents Association dinner.

Ruffin, a panelist on CNN’s Saturday night show Have I Got News For You, was likely relived from her April 26 hosting duties because of unflattering comments she made on a Daily Beast podcast towards the Donald Trump administration.

During the podcast, which was hosted by comedian Samantha Bee and Daily Beast’s chief content officer Joanna Coles, Ruffin called the people working for the Trump administration a “kind of a bunch of murderers.”

Ruffin, who previously hosted The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock and regularly appears on Late Night with Seth Meyers, was informed by the WHCA that she needs to target both sides of the political spectrum during her performance. However, she told the hosts that playing to both sides “makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, ‘cause they’re not.”

Eugene Daniels, WHCA president and soon-to-be co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend, sent a letter to members of the organization on Saturday night obtained by Politico, explaining the shift.

“The WHCA board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year.” Noting that the dinner should not focus “on the politics of division, Daniels added that he had been “re-envisioning” the dinner “for the past couple of weeks” before Ruffin’s dismissal.

TVNewser contacted Ruffin’s PR team for a statement but has not heard back as of this publication.

When she was announced as the headliner at this year’s WHCA, Daniels said, “Amber’s unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”

He added, “Her perspective will fit right in with the dinner’s tradition of honoring the freedom of the press while roasting the most powerful people on all sides of the aisle and the journalists who cover them.”

The WHCA dinner—colloquially known as the Nerd Prom— serves as a fundraiser for the WHCA and an opportunity to recognize fellow journalists and award scholarships to aspiring journalism students.