Amber Ruffin appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to mock the reason given by the White House Correspondents’ Association for dropping her from their upcoming dinner on April 26.
“I would have been so terrifically mean,” she told Meyers.
The WHCA’s president, Eugene Daniels, announced on Saturday that the board had decided to drop a comedic performance from the dinner, despite booking Ruffin earlier this year.
“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,” Daniels wrote.
Before her gig was dropped, Ruffin appeared on a Daily Beast podcast last week, previewing how she planned to handle the material. “I’m not 100% interested in being like, ‘Ha, you’re here. Look at your stupid head. You’re burned. I care, like, ‘You’re kind of a bunch of murderers.’ They were like, ‘You need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides and blah blah blah. I was like, ‘There’s no way I am going to be freaking doing that dude. Under no circumstances.”
After those remarks, Taylor Budowich, deputy chief of staff to President Donald Trump, chided the WHCA for its plans to feature Ruffin, citing her “murderers” remark.
On Late Night, Ruffin skewered the notion that calling out injustices would be tagged as “divisive” and that journalism should be solely focused on getting both sides.
Meyers said, “The whole reason we have a free press is so we can report stories as they actually happen.”
“No, we have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners,” Ruffin said. “That’s what it says in the First Amendment.”
“It does?” Meyers said.
“I think so. I can’t read it. They wrote it in that loopy cursive. The point is, that you are sowing the seeds of discord. And I used to be the same way. I thought, when people take away your rights, erase your history and deport your friends, you are supposed to call it out. But I was wrong. Glad to find that out now, because if they had let me give that speech…Oh baby. I would have been so terrifically mean.”
