‘The View’ Cohosts Invite Amber Ruffin to Perform After Firing From White House Correspondents Dinner (VIDEO)

Amanda Bell March 31, 2025, 12:51 pm

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The View Amber Ruffin — ABC & Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images

The View cohosts were divided on the issue of whether it was appropriate for the White House Correspondents Dinner to relieve comedian Amber Ruffin of her duties as host after she refused to commit to clowning on “both sides” of the political aisle equally. However, after a somewhat contentious discussion of the matter, they put out an offer to Ruffin herself to perform what she would’ve said on the show.

Ruffin appeared on a Daily Beast podcast last week and said that she’d been instructed by the WHCA to target Republicans and Democrats alike during her speech, and she refused, saying that members of the Trump administration are “a bunch of murderers” and she didn’t want do agree to “false equivalency that the media does” because that “makes them feel like human beings… ’cause they’re not.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin reacted by saying that when she first heard the story about Ruffin’s firing, she thought the WHCA was “being a bunch of cowards.” However, after hearing Ruffin’s comments about Trump administration members, she changed her mind. “The most important thing that journalists need to do in this moment is to be able to show that they can objectively, without fear or favor, covert his administration,” she explained. “If you have them sitting in a room with somebody who basically said Trump administration officials are subhuman and a bunch of murders, it adds to distrust in the press. It comes off as a kind of a tacit endorsement of what she’s saying.”

Sunny Hostin felt exactly the opposite. “It just seems to me that when you capitulate and give in to a bully, that bully will continue bullying yoy,” she said. “So this White House has taken control of the White House Correspondents Association, many of its duties, including who’s going to be in the press pool, now they’re rearranging the seats in the in the briefing room so that legacy media is going to be in the back and some right-wing podcaster is going to be in the front. I think that you stand united as a press corps, and you do things that you’ve always done. I mean, this has been an association since 1921 and when you talk about this false equivalency, there is a false equivalency. She’s a comedian, she’s not a journalist. And I think that it’s a time-honored tradition. And I think I know [WHCA President] Eugene Daniels very well. I think he made the wrong call. I think he capitulated, just like Chuck Schumer did.”

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Ana Navarro sided with Hostin, saying, “I’m very disappointed, first of all, because Amber Ruffin is really funny, also because Amber Ruffin is a Black woman and queer, and I think these are communities that feel that were being erased, that were under attack. And so I think having her there would have had a great significance, and also, because this doesn’t come in a vacuum, right? It’s it comes after attack after attack on the press, and after we have seen the 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.”

Sara Haines noted that the WHCA dinner has a somewhat storied history with Donald Trump: “I was surprised they invited a comedian because his presidential run, Donald Trump’s, started as a joke was made at his expense by President Obama at the time. I just don’t think this is an administration with a lot of sense of humor.”

Whoopi Goldberg, who is herself a comedian, said, “As one who is often told, ‘Listen, you can’t come to this. We can’t have you here doing this,’ people make the decisions they’re going to make.” She went on to add that it’s a “bad move” on the part of the association because, “We are already seeing people being stopped from saying what they think. One of the great things about being an American is you can say anything. And if you can’t take the heat, then you should not have started this fire. You know who Amber Ruffin is. You know the kind of humor she does… So for you all to have invited her and then go, ‘Uh oh, uh oh, we should stop that,’ that seems to be for me another hack at free speech.”

Griffin tried to push back on Goldberg’s point by suggesting that what Ruffin said wasn’t humorous, Goldberg noted, “When you’re talking to an interview, you’re not doing your show… It might’ve been much funnier than people thought.”

“You know what?” Navarro then suggested. “She should come do it here.”

After fielding applause from the audience, Goldberg agreed, “Amber, you’ve been invited.”

AMBER RUFFIN DROPPED FROM CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER: #TheView co-hosts weigh in after the comedian was removed from the lineup of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. pic.twitter.com/yHH1wyf3WV

— The View (@TheView) March 31, 2025