Amber Ruffin admits her cancelled WHCA dinner speech could have harmed press corps' reputation

Comedian Amber Ruffin worried during an interview on "The View" Wednesday that the White House press corps might have shrunk if she hosted the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) dinner.

Ruffin explained how she got the news that her appearance at the Washington, D.C., gala was canceled via a phone call, saying, "They were, like, ‘Look, you were running your mouth in these streets, and now you can’t host the White House correspondents’ dinner.’" 

She further told the ABC co-hosts, "I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is horrible. I was running my mouth, and I was being careless.’ And then, as the day went on, people were like, ‘Your free speech has been revoked. How dare they.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s right. I do have free speech. I’m allowed free speech.’"

Ruffin was supposed to host the annual dinner, which took place on Saturday, before her appearance was canceled by the WHCA board as part of a "re-envisioning" of the tradition.

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Amber Ruffin joined the co-hosts of "The View" on Wednesday to discuss her WHCA appearance being canceled.  (Screenshot/ABC/TheView)

"The View" co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Ruffin to respond to the idea that journalists reacting in the audience to remarks that targeted Trump may have put them "more in the crosshairs."

"Absolutely," Ruffin said. "And that makes me think, like, what if I had gone on White House Correspondents’ dinner, what if I had said all kinds of wild things and then what if the press pool for the White House shrank even more? That would have put us all in danger. I want as many people in there as possible."

Co-host Sunny Hostin spoke out against the WHCA after Ruffin's appearance was canceled.

"It seems to me when you capitulate and give in to a bully, that bully will continue bullying you," Hostin said during the show on March 31.

"I think you stand united as a press corps, and you do things that you’ve always done. This has been an association since 1921," she continued, calling out WHCA president Eugene Daniels. "When you talk about false equivalency, there is a false equivalency. She’s a comedian. She's not a journalist. I think that it’s a time-honored tradition, and I think – I know Eugene Daniels very well – I think he made the wrong call. I think he capitulated just like Chuck Schumer did."

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Co-host Ana Navarro also expressed disappointment after the decision. 

"It comes after attack, after attack on the press. And after we have seen media capitulating to him, and corporate America capitulating to him, and law firms capitulating to him. And so, I think it’s very disappointing to see all of these institutions bending a knee and giving in to the bully that is never going to give up bullying you because you've just emboldened and legitimized them," she said.

Ruffin also addressed her canceled appearance during an interview on Tuesday with late-night host Stephen Colbert.

"I thought, if they didn’t want me doing that show before I had even opened my mouth, then they would have been really, really sad with what they got," she told Colbert. "After they fired me, I looked back at my Google Doc and was like, This would have been bad. They would not have liked it."

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Amber Ruffin planned to slam President Trump during her White House Correspondents' Association dinner remarks, before the WHCA canceled her appearance.  (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images | Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Colbert asked her to share any jokes she was looking forward to making at the dinner.

"I was going to end it with, like, ‘This administration is trying to get you to hate other people and that’s not your natural state. Human beings are made to love one another. Blah, blah, blah. But I mean, it’s true. And they got you by convincing you that you are filled with hate, and you absolutely aren’t. It’s the opposite of what you’re made for,'" Ruffin said.

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"And saying that out loud now makes me glad that I got canceled," she added.