Former Nightline anchor and MSNBC host Martin Bashir suggested Friday that someone should defecate and/or urinate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s mouth because she compared the federal debt to slavery. 

Bashir said that, given what he believed to be Palin’s “reputation as a world-class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that she should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history.”

He gave an example in Thomas Thistlewood, an overseer of slaves at a major plantation in Jamaica in the 1700s. Bashir said that in his diary, Thistlewood wrote, “A slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.”

Bashir said this became known as “Darby’s dose, a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owner’s savagery and inhumanity.” 

“And he mentions a similar incident again in 1756, this time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch,” Bashir continued. “‘Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper; made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.’ I could go on, but you get the point.”

In concluding his segment, Bashir said when Palin “invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate [emphasis added].”

During the speech which inspired Bashir’s segment, Palin was referring to slavery in a general sense and was not speaking about chattel slavery when she said America would be enslaved to a foreign master if it did not resolve its debt crisis. She first qualified that her reference was not in a racial context.

“It’s going to be like slavery when that note is due,” Palin said last Saturday of the country’s debt. “We’re going to be beholden to a foreign master… because there is no plan coming out of Washington, D.C. to stop the incurrence of debt, is there?”

According to Merriam-Webster‘s dictionary, one of the definitions of “slavery” is “submission to a dominating influence.” And Palin later emphasized she used her words to make a point about how dire the country’s debt situation is.

Palin and her family have received numerous death threats since she was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008.