Trump: Why Does Samantha Bee Still Have a Job?

President weighs in after comedian's remarks about Ivanka
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 1, 2018 8:55 AM CDT
Trump: Why Does Samantha Bee Still Have a Job?
President Trump waves on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Wednesday.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The buzz around Samantha Bee and the insult she hurled at Ivanka Trump on her show Wednesday night has, not surprisingly, caught the attention of Ivanka's father, CNN notes. On TBS' Full Frontal, Bee had called the younger Trump a "feckless c---" while discussing how "oblivious" she was for tweeting out a pic of herself and her young son while headlines of immigrant parents being separated from their children circulate. On Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Bee's remark "vile and vicious," and early Friday, the president himself weighed in. "Why aren't they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show?" he tweeted. "A total double standard but that's O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!"

USA Today notes his message was similar to that coming from his wife's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, who called it a "double standard" that ABC canceled Roseanne Barr's show over the comedian's racist tweet, but TBS merely apologized for Bee's remark. Matthew Fleischer doesn't think the two are equivalent and explains why in the Los Angeles Times. His upshot: "Equating crudeness with Roseanne's outlandish tweets normalizes racism and anti-Semitism." Meanwhile, some are wondering whether Trump's remarks on Bee are in violation of a federal law prohibiting executive branch members from trying to influence a private entity's employment decisions. (Two sponsors have pulled their ads from Bee's show so far.)

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