“When I began to think about what entertainer would be a perfect fit for the dinner this year, Amber was immediately at the top of my list. She has the ability to walk the line between blistering commentary and humor all while provoking her audience to think about the important issues of the day. I’m thrilled and honored she said yes,” Politico‘s Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement. “Amber’s unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate. 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. This dinner is about centering the importance of a functioning democracy and Amber is the type of entertainer who understands both the significance of that mission as well as the mechanics of power in this country.”
Ruffin is a political comedy veteran, having served as a writer and frequent on-air personality on Late Night With Seth Meyers (she hosts the show’s current events segment “Amber Says What”). From 2020 to 2023, she hosted her own series The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock. Most recently, she’s been a team captain on the CNN trivia game show Have I Got News For You, appearing alongside Roy Wood and Michael Ian Black.
Trump’s grudge against former WHCD headliner “Marble Mouth Meyers” is longstanding; ahead of the inauguration, he threatened Comcast and NBC over the critical content of Late Night. In the episode that aired after Trump’s Late Night tirade, Meyers and Ruffin joked about their weariness of having to live through another Trump presidency, both of them falling into “panic naps” at the mere mention of the president’s name. “Amber! … Trump won and you have to deal with it,” Meyers playfully scolded his employee. Ruffin responded fearfully: “You mean, we have to write jokes about this man for four more years?” She’ll have to write a few more for the WHCD, which takes place April 26.
