THE ANNUAL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER FIASCO. Over the weekend, the White House Correspondents’ Association abruptly canceled the performance of comedian Amber Ruffin, originally scheduled for the organization’s April 26 annual dinner. Once a celebrity-filled pageant of Washington journalists and politicians, the dinner has struggled to find equilibrium and meaning since the first election of President Donald Trump in 2016. Trump, the target of years of overwhelmingly hostile coverage from many of the dinner’s participants, has never attended the event as president and does not plan to go this year.

Ruffin had promised to make the dinner a Trump-hating extravaganza. In an interview with CNN on Feb. 28, she said she did not want Trump to attend. “No one wants that,” Ruffin said. “I don’t know that anyone’s looking forward to being in the same room as him.”

Ruffin also said that when she talked to other show business types, they advised her, “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.” Ruffin said she considered their words but decided “I’m not going to do that.”

That was OK with the WHCA, or at least it was OK with it in February. When the organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, who has recently become an MSNBC host, chose Ruffin for the job,

© Washington Examiner