Comedian Amber Ruffin joined late-night host Seth Meyers on Monday after her appearance at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner was canceled, taking several jabs at the association and lamenting that she had to be fair to “both sides.”
“See Seth, the problem is, that’s divisive. Take it from me. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides,” she said, reacting to Meyers by mocking a joke he made about a burglar robbing a bodega.
Ruffin was set to headline the WHCA’s annual dinner, but her appearance was abruptly canceled on Saturday after the board unanimously decided to drop a comedic performance for the dinner as part of a “re-envisioning” of the tradition.
“Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point it out on television,” Meyers said.
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Ruffin said she thought the same thing prior to her performance getting canceled.
“But today is Monday, and Monday’s Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully,” Ruffin sarcastically responded. “When you watch ‘The Sound of Music,’ you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”
Meyers set Ruffin up for another dig at the WHCA and said the point of a free press was to report stories as they happen.
“No, we have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners,” she said. “The point is that you’re 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’re supposed to call it out. But I was wrong.”
Ruffin joked that she would have been “so terrifically mean” during the back-and-forth between her and Meyers before announcing that she had to leave to return the dress she was supposed to wear to the dinner.
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As Ruffin jested that she had already taken the tags off of the dress and that she was just going to say they “blew off in the wind,” Meyers added, “That’s lying, Amber.”
“You can’t say that. That’s journalism,” Ruffin concluded, while winking at the camera and walking off set.
The WHCA’s decision to cancel Ruffin’s performance came one day after White House aide Taylor Budowich criticized the association for recruiting the anti-Trump comedian.
“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.’ 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?” Budowich wrote on X.
Ruffin suggested during a podcast interview, prior to her appearance being canceled, that members of the Trump administration were “murderers,” as she made clear that she was not planning to equally direct her jokes at both sides of the political aisle.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
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