Samantha Bee Slams Ivanka Trump’s Tone-Deaf Photo Amid Migrant Crisis
UPDATE: Samantha Bee apologized to Ivanka Trump and her viewership after she called the president’s daughter a “feckless cunt” on Wednesday’s Full Frontal. “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,” Bee said. Full Frontal removed the video from their YouTube channel.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Bee’s show “vile” and questioned the broader media’s reaction. “The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling. [Bee’s] 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 in a statement.
The comment occurred in a segment focused on President Trump’s immigration policies, criticizing the administration over two major issues: separating migrant children from their parents and the Office of Refugee Resettlement losing track of nearly 1,500 migrant children in 2017.
Bee noted that the U.S. government has broken up migrant families for years including through the Obama administration. But President Trump and “haunted marionette Jeff Sessions” are taking the problem to a new level. “We have had awful immigration practices since, well, always – even under presidents we liked seeing shirtless,” she said. “No, Donald Trump didn’t invent this issue – he’s just making it so much worse. Now everyone who even approaches the border is treated like a criminal.”
In a recent NPR interview, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said the “name of the game is deterrence,” adding that the migrant children are “taken care of – they’re put into foster care or whatever.”
“‘Foster care or whatever’?” Bee fumed in response to the audio clip. “Jesus Christ – if John Kelly had directed Sophie’s Choice, it would have been called, ‘Ungrateful Bitch Got to Keep One Whole Kid.’ … Despite what John Kelly thinks, cruelty won’t stop immigration – it will just make immigrants’ lives harder and strain our already overwhelmed system.”
Bee closed out the piece pointing to the tone-deaf photo Ivanka Trump posted of herself and her son while migrant families are separated at the border. “Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second-most oblivious tweet we’ve seen this week,” she said, alluding to Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet.
“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 cunt! He listens to you! Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to fuckin’ stop it.”