A week after receiving backlash for using a vulgar term to refer to Ivanka Trump, comedian Samantha Bee returned to her TBS show Wednesday to address the controversy.
Immediately addressing the issue at the opening of her show, Bee said she hated to “contribute to the nightmare of 24-hour news cycles that we’re all white-knuckling through.”
“I should have known that a potty-mouthed insult would be inherently more interesting … than this juvenile immigration policy,” she said.
READ MORE: Donald Trump slams TBS, ‘no talent’ Samantha Bee after comedian calls Ivanka Trump a ‘feckless c***’
“It is a word I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it,” Bee said on Wednesday. “I used it as an insult, I crossed a line, I regret it and I do apologize for that. The problem is that many women have heard that word in the worst moments of their lives. A lot of them don’t want it reclaimed. They want it gone, and I don’t blame them.”
“I don’t want to inflict more pain on them,” she said. “I want this show to be challenging and I want it to be honest and I never intended to hurt anyone, except Ted Cruz.”
She added that she “didn’t care” that some men were offended and that she “hated that it distracted from more important issues.”
READ MORE: Samantha Bee reveals what Canadians think of America
The host also jokingly introduced the new censors that would be used on her show.
Cameras showed four dour-looking men dressed in suits with their hands on red buttons, who she introduced as her show’s new censors.
“Civility is just nice words,” she said. “Maybe we should all worry about the civility of our actions.”
READ MORE: Samantha Bee apologizes after Ivanka Trump insult backlash
The Full Frontal star had called Ivanka Trump a vulgar term in an attempt to encourage her to speak to her father about changing a policy where children of people entering the country illegally are being detained.
Bee’s comments, in which she called the U.S. president’s daughter a “feckless c**t,” drew criticism from many after her show last Wednesday, with sponsors like State Farm and Autotrader.com pulling their ads from the program.
U.S. President Donald Trump had called for her to be fired for what she said on last week’s episode of Full Frontal.
The comedian apologized the next day, saying, “I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.”
TBS addressed the issue, tweeting, “Those words should not have been aired. It was our mistake too, and we regret it.”
—With files from the Associated Press