President Trump, ever conscious of slights against him, lashed out at Samantha Bee on Twitter this morning after the late-night host called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” for supporting inhumane immigration policies. Bee later apologized for her language, as did TBS. “Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show?” Trump wrote. “A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!”
Trump’s evocation of a double standard implicitly references the cancellation of Roseanne, which ABC brought to an end earlier this week after Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist message about Valerie Jarrett. Trump supporters have tried to draw a comparison between Barr’s outright racism and Bee’s vulgarity, though that’s a pretty false equivalency (Trump, for one, is plenty vulgar already). White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders previously demanded that “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.” Trump has also asked for an apology from ABC for things said about him on that network. Neither network has taken such action.
