With just weeks until the 2024 election, then-Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign pulled out all the stops. Her closing argument rally featured a free t-shirt-making station and fun snacks for attendees like cotton candy and pop-tarts.
As rallygoers waved American flags, Harris took the stage and railed against Donald Trump, the “threat” he brings to democracy, and the attack his presidency would wage on Americans’ freedom.
But the broad electorate didn’t buy it. In fact, on Nov. 5, 2024, they wholeheartedly rejected it as nearly every area of the country shifted to the right.
Now four weeks into the second Trump administration, elite media have signaled that they don’t care what the American people feel, or want.
The White House Correspondents Association announced on Feb. 4 that for this year’s 2025 dinner, anti-Trump comedian Amber Ruffin would be the entertainer. Ruffin often takes jabs at Trump in her comedy and during her appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyer. In 2020, Ruffin said that “No president has done more for women—to make our lives worse,” than Trump.
“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,” WHCA president Eugene Daniels wrote in a press release.
After learning that Ruffin once called Trump a “toddler with his pants pulled down,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told me during a White House press briefing that the comedian was “certainly an interesting choice” and while Trump has not attended a dinner as president, he is still mulling the decision to attend.
Ruffin then took to CNN to say that she hopes the president does not attend and that she doesn’t believe anyone is “looking forward” to being in the same room.
“No one wants that,” Ruffin said about Trump potentially attending. “Sure, it’s something to do. But, I can’t imagine he would. I can’t imagine he would. He should. He’s missing out on one of the cool things about being the President of the United States. But I don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him.”
The comedian also added that she has no intentions of spreading the love during the night and will only make jokes about the people she disagrees with.
“[Past hosts] also said that you have to make fun of everybody. You can’t just make fun of the people you disagree with, you have to spread it out evenly. And I am not going to do that,” Ruffin said on CNN as she laughed. “Maybe I will do it a little bit, probably not.”
Daniels wrote that Ruffin’s “perspective” would fit right in with the dinner’s tradition of “honoring the freedom of the press” while roasting the powerful people. And he is right, Ruffin’s beliefs and perspective will fit in with the dinner, only attended by the members of the elite media, celebrities, and well-known personalities in the world’s most powerful city.
But Ruffin’s viewpoint—and by association the elite media’s—doesn’t fit in with the direction the rest of America is going. And as the White House phases out mainstream outlets and brings new media, being out of touch won’t serve the WHCA well.