Amid rising tensions between the White House Correspondents’ Association and President Donald Trump’s administration, the association has scrapped comedian Amber Ruffin’s scheduled headline act at next month’s annual dinner.
“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, comically adding that the event’s “focus is not on the politics of division” but instead on ‘honoring’ the work of journalists who belong to the association.
Despite the statement, the event regularly featured comics who take aim at President Trump and his administration during his first term.
The decision follows an attack by White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, who criticized the association for choosing to feature Ruffin, a comedian known for her sharp critiques of the administration.
Relations between the WHCA and the White House have worsened amid the Trump administration’s persistent assaults on the press. Recently, the White House announced it would take over organizing the rotating press pool covering the president—a responsibility traditionally handled by the association—and has even barred The Associated Press from its events.
Budowich ripped the WHCA’s statement scrapping Ruffin’s performance, calling 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, who worked recently as a POLITICO reporter, will soon co-host a show on MSNBC.
Last month, when announcing that Ruffin would headline the event, Daniels explained that her “unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”
Emmy- and Tony-nominated comedian, author, and NBC writer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Amber Ruffin has recently taken aim at Trump administration policies.
Earlier this month, during a segment of “Amber Says What?” on Meyers’ show, she mocked the White House for barring AP reporters from the Oval Office after they refused to comply with the president’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Politico reported.
It’s not clear if Trump plans to attend the event. He never attended a single WHCA dinner throughout his first term.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, is warning that Democrats’ “very dangerous” rhetoric and behavior could lead to something “serious” against the president.
During an interview on Fox News, Gingrich dismissed a claim by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., that Republicans are “on the run,” warning that Democrats are in a rage and offering “no solutions.”
Gingrich said the left is resorting to extreme tactics to resist Trump and oppose Elon Musk’s efforts to cut government spending.
“Well, I think that everything you showed earlier reflects what Lincoln said at Gettysburg when he said, this is a test of whether this system or any system so conceived in liberty can survive. You have a hard-line group who believe that they have the right to be violent, that they have the right to deny the American people the choice of their leadership, that they have the right to break the law. The answer to all of that is, frankly, you have to lock them up. You have to enforce the law,” Gingrich began.
“Period. And at some point, people begin to realize that you can’t wage war against the entire American people. And in that sense, I would argue that Elon Musk is simply one of the people serving the American people. He’s a senior advisor to the president of the United States. And I think that, in that sense, all of this is totally unacceptable, as is harassing a Supreme Court justice or harassing the vice president and his three-year-old,” Gingrich added.
“[Democrats] are so enraged that Trump is actually changing what, overwhelmingly, Americans believe is a corrupt system. I’ll just give you one piece of data. Our America’s New Majority project just had a poll come out yesterday. 82% of the American people believe the system is corrupt. Now that’s dangerous. Both for the survival of freedom. But also it tells you the fact that the Democrats, who want to defend the bureaucracy and the corruption and the waste, they’re going to have a big mountain to climb come 2026,” Gingrich said.
