Amber Ruffin Would Have Done a “Terrifically Mean” White House Correspondents’ Dinner Speech

In the days since comedian Amber Ruffin was fired from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, she has learned some things—namely, that “you have to be fair to both sides,” she said during a brief appearance on Monday’s episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers. The late-night host and writer also advised her boss to avoid a “divisive” joke about a man who robbed a Brooklyn bodega.

“Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point it out on television,” Seth Meyers said.

“I thought that too…on Friday,” she replied. “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. When you watch The Sound of Music, you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”

“You mean the Nazis,” Meyers said.

“Calling them that is so one-sided,” responded Ruffin.

Her remarks come after the White House Correspondents’ Association cancelled Ruffin’s planned appearance at the journalism-focused event, set to be held later this month. WHCA President Eugene Daniels, who said in February that Ruffin was “immediately at the top of my list” of candidates to headline the dinner, emailed WHCA members on Saturday, March 29 to reverse course. “At this consequential moment for journalism, I want to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division,” Daniels wrote, “but entirely on awarding our colleagues for their outstanding work and providing scholarship and mentorship to the next generation of journalists.”

Ruffin’s ouster came only a day after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich criticized the comic on social media. Budowich shared a recent clip of Ruffin on The Daily Beast podcast, where she described the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers,” and said she had been told to skewer “both sides” of the political spectrum. “There’s no way I’m going to be freaking doing that, dude. Under no circumstances,” Ruffin says in the clip. “It’s bonkers that we’re still acting like things are normal.”

Ruffin remained firm in her stance even after being fired. “We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. That’s what it says in the First Amendment,” she sarcastically joked. “But 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! Glad to find that out now. Because if they had let me give that speech, oh baby—I would have been so terrifically mean.”