Samantha Bee has figured out how to get press for her ratings-challenged show: Attack President Trump and his administration — even his family.
It’s worked for other late-night talk show hosts, as well as the not-very-funny “stars” on Comedy Central.
Bee, host of “Full Frontal” on TBS, made the news when she called Trump’s daughter Ivanka a “feckless c**t.” She apologized after advertisers warned that they would bail, but has since walked back her apology.
On Wednesday’s show, Bee called for opponents of Trump to keep harassing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Protesters this week stormed a restaurant where Nielsen was eating dinner with her family and shouted at the secretary, at one point chanting “shame.”
In a lengthy rant about the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” illegal immigration policy, Bee concluded with this: “Keep chasing Kirstjen Nielsen out of restaurants, you beautiful [people],” she said.
In another segment, Bee “interspersed footage of a press conference held by Nielsen with video of iconic female villains in cinema,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote, “including The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’s White Witch, The Little Mermaid’s Ursula, Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbride and The Parent Trap’s Meredith.”
“I’m so sorry, those comparisons are not fair. Meredith was at least a good publicist,” Bee said.
Advertisers bailed after Bee attacked Ivanka Trump.
“The first broadcast of Bee’s TBS series ‘Full Frontal’ after she sparked a controversy last week contained far fewer national commercials than it normally does, a signal that Madison Avenue find the comedienne too hot to support a week after she used a charged epithet that refers to a part of the female anatomy to insult President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka,” Variety reported after her first show back.