The White House Correspondents’ Association is canceling comedian Amber Ruffin’s planned headline performance for its annual dinner next month, amid tensions between the association and President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The WHCA board has unanimously decided we are no longer featuring a comedic performance this year,” WHCA President Eugene Daniels wrote in an email Saturday afternoon to members, adding that the event’s “focus is not on the politics of division” but rather on honoring the work of the association’s journalists.
The decision comes after White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich attacked the association for planning to spotlight Ruffin, who has been critical of the administration.
Tensions have escalated between the WHCA and the White House, as the Trump administration has consistently attacked the press. The White House announced it would take over organization of the rotating press pool covering the president, a task historically undertaken by the association, and has barred The Associated Press from events.
Budowich slammed the WHCA’s statement scrapping Ruffin’s performance, labeling it a “cop out.”
“No accountability at WHCA, just a cop out statement—pathetic!” Budowich wrote on X, attacking Daniels and adding it was “so sad that such a storied and consequential group has been so quickly driven into irrelevancy.”
Daniels until recently worked as a POLITICO reporter and will soon co-host a show on MSNBC.
In his announcement last month that Ruffin was set to headline the event, Daniels wrote that she had been chosen because her “unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”
Ruffin, an Emmy- and Tony-nominated comedian, author and writer for NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” has mocked Trump administration policies in recent weeks.
In a segment of “Amber Says What?” on Meyers’ show earlier this month, Ruffin took a jab at the White House’s decision to bar AP reporters from the Oval Office for refusing to follow the president’s order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
“I was like ‘What! Now you care about deadnaming?'” Ruffin said, to laughs from the audience.
It is unclear whether the president plans to attend the dinner next month. He skipped the night’s festivities throughout his first term.
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