Former Comedy Central host Jon Steward came to Samantha Bee’s defense over the weekend after the TBS late-night host faced fire for calling White House advisor Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”
“They don’t give a shit about the word ‘cunt,’” Stewart said, the Daily Beast reported, of Trump and his administration on Sunday during an onstage Q&A at the Clusterfest comedy festival. “That is probably—he says that instead of ‘please,’ I’m guessing.”
Bee, who spent more than a decade working as Stewart’s Daily Show correspondent, apologized last week for her on-air slur against Ivanka Trump and Full Frontal advertisers State Farm and Autotrader suspended their sponsorship of the weekly show.
Jon Stewart went on to seemingly suggest that Bee shouldn’t have apologized because doing so is to participate in the “game” conservatives play. Stewart said there is nothing anyone can do to “make them give up this ‘We’re the real victims’ game,” because, “it’s a game, it’s a strategy, and it’s working.”
During a stand-up routine, Stewart also praised Bee and suggested, in reference to Ivanka Trump, that she’s probably whatever Bee says she is.
“I’m going to tell you something about Sam Bee, because I’ve known her for a very long time. You could not find a kinder, smarter, more lovely individual than Samantha Bee. Trust me, if she called someone a cunt…” Steward said, according to the Daily Beast, with a silence allowing the audience to finish his thought.
“Don’t get caught in a trap of thinking you can live up to a code of integrity that will be enough for the propagandist right. There isn’t,” Stewart warned the audience earlier in the night. “And so, create your own moral code to live by, but don’t be fooled into trying to make concessions that you think will mollify them.”
On Thursday, Bee took the stage to accept a Television Academy Honors award and defended calling Ivanka Trump a “cunt” and lashed out at the Trump administration.
President Trump slammed Bee and demanded to know why the TBS late-night host had not been fired for her “horrible language” and “low ratings.”
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