Amber Ruffin Brutally Mocks Trump and WHCA for Nuking Her in Eviscerating Late Night Bit

Comedian and CNN host Amber Ruffin brutally mocked President Donald Trump and the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) in a cutting satirical bit on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Ruffin — co-host of CNN’s Have I Got News For You — was booked to headline the 2025 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner (WHCD) until the association canceled her over comments she made on The Daily Beast podcast last Friday:

I care that you’re kind of a bunch of murderers. I mean so like they were like “You need to be you know equal and make sure that the that you give it to both sides and blah blah blah.”

I was like, “There’s no way I’m gonna be freaking doing that, dude. Under no circumstances.”

…they want that false equivalency that the media does. They want that. It feels great. It makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way because they’re not.

WHCA President Eugene Daniels announced they were canceling Ruffin the following day “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.”

On Monday night’s edition of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, host Seth Meyers teed up Ruffin for a searing parody by beginning a joke about a bodega robbery — only to be interrupted by Ruffin’s plea that he tell “both sides” of the robbery:

SETH MEYERS: And, finally, tonight, a bodega was robbed in Brooklyn this week. The burglar shattered the store’s front door, emptied the cash register, and set fire to the ATM. When asked why he does…

AMBER RUFFIN: Seth, Seth, I’m gonna stop you right there.

SETH MEYERS: Oh, hey everybody, that’s Amber. The very same Amber Ruffin, everybody!

AMBER RUFFIN: Seth, look at me. Honestly, I’m concerned with how you’re going to end that joke.

SETH MEYERS: You’re concerned with how I’m going to end it–. Well, obviously, I’m gonna make a punchline to make fun of the guy who robbed the bodega

AMBER RUFFIN: See Seth? The problem is that’s divisive. Take it from me. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides.

SETH MEYERS: Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense in this case. You know, there’s an innocent bodega owner. There’s a burglar.

AMBER RUFFIN: Or hear me out, there are very fine people on both sides.

SETH MEYERS: Nobody shattered the front door of a bodega.

AMBER RUFFIN: Did he, or did he provide an innovative ventilation system?

SETH MEYERS: Yeah but he stole the cash out of the register.

AMBER RUFFIN: He received a microloan.

SETH MEYERS: He set fire to the ATM.

AMBER RUFFIN: He bravely fought inflation. Thank you for your service.

SETH MEYERS: Yeah, I just… Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point it out on television.

AMBER RUFFIN: I thought that too — on Friday!

But today is Monday. And Monday’s “Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully. When you watch The Sound of Music, you have root for the singing children and the other people.”

SETH MEYERS: You mean the Nazis?

AMBER RUFFIN: Calling them that is so one-sided.

SETH MEYERS: Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?

AMBER RUFFIN: For now.

SETH MEYERS: I mean, it’s just the whole reason we have a free press is so we can report stories, you know, as they actually happen.

AMBER RUFFIN: No, we have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. That’s what it says in the First Amendment.

SETH MEYERS: It does?

AMBER RUFFIN: I think so. I can’t read it. They wrote it in that loopy cursive, but the point is that you’re sowing the seeds of discord. And I used to be the same way.

I thought when people take away your rights, erase your history and deport your friends, you’re supposed to call it out.

But I was wrong. Glad to find that out now, because if they had let me give that speech, ooh baby, I would have been so terrifically mean.

SETH MEYERS: Just burning everyone.

AMBER RUFFIN: You know I would have been on one. Anywho, don’t have time to teach you all this. I gotta go.

SETH MEYERS: Yeah, where you going?

AMBER RUFFIN: I have to return the dress I was gonna wear to the correspondents’ dinner. I already took the tags off, but I’ma just say they blew off in the wind.

SETH MEYERS: Yeah, but that’s, that’s lying, Amber. That’s wrong.

AMBER RUFFIN: I, I, you can’t say that. That’s journalism.

Watch above via NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers.