Turning the page. Samantha Bee opened her return to Full Frontal With Samantha Bee on Wednesday, June 6, by addressing the controversy she sparked by calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c–t” on air.
“It is a word I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it. This time, I used it as an insult. I crossed the line. I regret it, and I do apologize for that,” the comedian, 48, said. “The problem is that many women have heard that word at the worst moments of their lives. A lot of them don’t want that word reclaimed. They want it gone, and I don’t blame them. I don’t want to inflict more pain on them. I want this show to be challenging and I want it to be honest, but I never intended it to hurt anyone.”
Bee explained to viewers that she regrets “contributing to the nightmare of 24-hour news cycles” and distracting people “from more important issues.” She then called her remark “a potty-mouthed insult.”
“I’m really sorry that I said that word,” she concluded. “But you know what? Civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry a little bit more about the niceness of our actions.”
As previously reported, the former Daily Show With Jon Stewart correspondent used the vulgar word about Trump, 36, on the May 30 episode of Full Frontal while discussing what she called “the atrocious treatment of migrant children” by the administrations of President Donald Trump and past commanders in chief. She initially apologized the next day, tweeting that her language was “inappropriate and inexcusable.”
Bee further addressed the fallout while speaking at the Television Academy Honors in Hollywood. “We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word, when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are wrenching children from their parents and treating people legally seeking asylum as criminals,” she said on stage on May 31. “If we are OK with that then really, who are we?”
The president, 71, called on TBS to fire “no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show” in a tweet posted on June 1. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the slur as “vile and vicious.”
Full Frontal With Samantha Bee airs on TBS Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. ET.
