The comedian canceled by the White House Correspondents’ Association for refusing to roast both sides at their annual dinner offered the organization a scathing rebuke Monday.
Amber Ruffin, a longtime writer and recurring guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers, appeared on the show while Meyers was addressing the news in his monologue.
”I just want to take a moment to say that I’m a big fan of Amber Ruffin, and I would have loved to hear what she had to say," Meyers said.
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Ruffin was fired from the dinner shortly after she appeared on The Daily Beast Podcast Thursday. She explained how she saw the people in the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers,” and argued that playing to both sides “makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, ‘cause they’re not.”
After a round of online outrage from right-wing pundits over her comments on the podcast, WHCA President Eugene Daniels announced on Saturday that she’d no longer be performing.
“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.
As Meyers continued with his monologue, Ruffin herself interrupted, offering a sarcastic response to the WHCA board members who canceled her speech.
“If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides,” Ruffin said, mockingly.
“Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point it out on television,” Meyers replied.
“I thought that, too,” Ruffin said. “On Friday. 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.”
She joked, “When you watch Sound of Music, you have to root for the singing children and the other people."
“You mean the Nazis?” Meyers asked.
“Calling them that is so one-sided," Ruffin joked.
Meyers argued, “I mean, the whole reason we have a free press is so we can report stories, you know, as they actually happen.”
“No, we have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners,” Ruffin quipped.
In Ruffin’s first TV appearance since the news broke, she offered no apology to her critics.
She deadpanned, “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 added, “Glad to find that out now, because if they had let me give that speech, ooh, baby! I would have been so terrifically mean.”
She concluded by taking a thinly veiled dig at the Correspondents’ Association, beginning her joke by claiming she had to return the dress she had bought for the event.
Even though she had already removed the tags, she said: “I’m just going to say they blew off in the wind.”
“But that’s lying, Amber, that’s wrong,” Meyers retorted.
“Ah, ah, ah, you can’t say that, that’s journalism,” Ruffin said, winking at the camera.
