With this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner just weeks away, Amber Ruffin is scrambling to keep up with the news cycle.
“News is happening at such a freaking clip that, how are we supposed to hit this moving target?” Ruffin, the night’s featured comedian, noted on this week’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast.
“You’re going to have to write the whole thing that afternoon,” co-host Samantha Bee joked.
The dinner, traditionally a sharp comedic roast of the sitting president, has long has long given D.C. journalists a rare chance to laugh at those they cover.
The president, when in attendance, also gets a chance to deliver their own lines. In 2011, Barack Obama famously took jabs at Donald Trump, who had spent weeks promoting the “birther” conspiracy theory before it was debunked when doctors released a copy of Obama’s birth certificate.
“I know that he’s taken some flak lately,” Obama said of Trump in his set. “But no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest.“
“And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing?" Obama continued. “What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” he teased.
Trump was reportedly “beside himself with fury.” As podcast co-host Joanna Coles noted, “many people say that was the ground zero for him deciding to run for president.”
During his first term as president, Trump did not attend the event, calling it “so boring and so negative” in 2019. Ruffin, a panelist on CNN’s comedy news series Have I Got News for You?, doesn’t expect him to show up this year either.
But that only gives her more reason to take aim at his administration, Ruffin explained.
“They were like, ‘you need to be equal and make sure that you give it to both sides,’ and I was like, ‘there’s no way I’m going to be freaking doing that,‘” she said. “Under no circumstances.”
Coles, a frequent attendee at the dinner, reflected that at its core, its about highlighting “journalists’ ability to write about what’s going on in the White House.”
It’s also about getting very, very drunk.
“There’s endless cocktail parties before the actual dinner,” Coles told Ruffin. “People get wasted beyond imagining,” Bee added. “I (once) saw someone throwing up violently in the hotel lobby where I was staying.”
To be clear, she’s not judging: “It’s just free drinks for hardworking people who are in a state of total chaos and in many ways persecution,” Bee continued. “They’re like, ‘I’m getting my fill tonight.‘”
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