The White House on Thursday condemned comedian Samantha Bee’s remark that White House senior adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump is a “feckless c***,” calling on TBS, which airs her show, to publicly repudiate her.
The comment – for which Bee later apologized Thursday – comes in the wake of a national debate about incendiary language in the political arena. Earlier this week, Roseanne Barr’s hit television show was abruptly canceled after she made a racist reference on Twitter to former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Bee’s language was “vile and vicious.”
“The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network,” Sanders said.
Both CNN and TBS are owned by Turner, a subsidiary of Time Warner.
Bee, who made the comments Wednesday night on her show, “Full Frontal,” was criticizing the Trump administration over the separation of undocumented families apprehended at the border.
“Tearing children away from their parents is so evil, it’s the inciting incident in almost every movie we’ve ever cared about,” Bee said during her monologue, presenting Obama-era photos of undocumented children sleeping in cages.
After Ivanka Trump posted a photo of her and her child amid resurfaced reports that undocumented children are being separated from their families when they are apprehended by immigration authorities, Bee referenced Barr’s recent tweet.
“Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second most oblivious tweet we’ve seen this week,” Bee said. “You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless c***!”
“He listens to you,” she added. “Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f***ing stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes, OK?”
Bee apologized for the comment on Twitter Thursday afternoon.
“I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it,” she said.
Sanders’ response is notably stronger than her public reaction to Barr’s comments. Asked about the former ABC star’s remarks at Wednesday’s White House briefing, Sanders said neither Trump nor the White House were defending the comments, which she called “inappropriate,” but she also insisted the administration was owed an apology from the network for airing derogatory comments about the White House.
“The President is pointing to the hypocrisy in the media saying the most horrible things about this President and nobody addresses it,” Sanders told reporters at Wednesday’s press briefing.
Bee frequently uses foul language while performing. She used the obscene word to describe President Woodrow Wilson during her “Not the White House Correspondents Dinner” TBS special last year.
CNN’s Frank Pallotta contributed to this report.
