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By Bowing to Trump, White House Correspondents’ Dinner Fell Short at a Critical Time
After Amber Ruffin's firing, the White House Correspondents' Dinner felt hollowed-out
When the programming of the evening picked back up, various luminaries of journalism (CNN’s Abby Phillip and NBC’s Kristen Welker among them) presented awards to members of the organization, whose work is creditable and whose respective moments in the spotlight, such as it was, were heartening. On an evening during which it was “just us” because anyone else who might have appeared on the stage was either a hostile president or someone whose presence might have caused him to go nuclear, individual group members speaking about the work they did to hold the powerful to account felt meaningful. But the elision of what had been planned — and the absence of the direct critique that has been a hallmark of this event for decades, out of fear of the man these journalists are capable of covering well — marks a low point for a dinner that, this year, was in many ways over before it began.
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