Comedy act dropped from annual White House press dinner

Comedy is off the menu at the annual White House correspondents' dinner, a once convivial get-together for reporters to meet US federal government officials that has become too fraught for light-heartedness amid the second Donald Trump presidency.

- Edward Helmore

The dinner, scheduled for 26 April, is organised by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), and typically features a post-meal comedic interlude. Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner - except for Trump, at least not while in office.

But this year the WHCA, already at war with the White House over some news outlets' restricted access to Air Force One and the Oval Office, selected Amber Ruffin, a Nebraska-born comedian known for mixing her humour with song-and-dance routines - and for frequently criticising the Trump administration.

The White House deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, attacked the association for booking Ruffin, opening a new front in a conflict between the president and the press that began when the administration said it - not the WHCA - would organise the rotating pool of journalists covering the president.