Samantha Bee has issued a mea culpa for her scathing tweet featuring Eric Trump, but it’s not for who — or what — you’d expect.
The comedian’s “Full Frontal” Twitter account sent out a tweet on Tuesday with a photograph of Eric Trump and a slain cheetah featuring the quote, “She was asking for it. A strong cheetah would never allow itself to be subjected to getting shot.”
"She was asking for it. A strong cheetah would never allow itself to be subjected to getting shot." –@EricTrump pic.twitter.com/0df30bELnW
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 2, 2016
The fabricated quote came in reference to Trump’s defense of father Donald Trump’s comments that his daughter Ivanka would “find another job” if she was subjected to the sexual harassment of which former Fox CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes is being accused by several of his female employees.
“I think what he’s saying is, Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman, she wouldn’t allow herself to be objected to it,” Eric Trump said in an interview with Charlie Rose on “CBS This Morning.” “And by the way, you should certainly take it up with Human Resources, and I think she definitely would as a strong person. At the same time, I don’t think she would allow herself to be subjected to that.”
But a day after Bee’s account sent out the tweet, the show issued a statement to continue to poke fun at the situation.
“The joke was supposed to be on him, but in the end, it was on us,” the statement said. “Thousands of patriots came spilling out of the woodwork to let us know that we had misidentified the animal in the picture. We erroneously referred to this animal as a ‘cheetah.’ For that we are deeply, deeply sorry.”
“We spent the rest of the day undergoing extensive animal identification training provided by a team of world-class experts,” the statement continued. “After reviewing the poll results and exercising our new set of skills provided to us by this training, we have decided that the animal in question is in fact a bear.”
Bee’s “Full Frontal” Twitter account then proceeded to parody the already parodied mea culpa by sending out a series of tweets featuring Eric Trump and a number of purposefully misidentified animals.
To make it up to you, we will correctly identify animals. Here's Eric Trump with a deer hunted for its ivory tusks. pic.twitter.com/5g1exEtpLx
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 3, 2016
Eric Trump hurt this innocent duck and we are sad about it! pic.twitter.com/Fw0e1NItCz
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 3, 2016
He shooted a shark 🙁 pic.twitter.com/RPKHiV8Tnu
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 3, 2016
Pushing it one step further, Tiffany Trump was named in place of Eric.
Deeply upset to see that Tiffany Trump shot an elephant. As you can see, our animal identification classes paid off! pic.twitter.com/PJIUSMG8NZ
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 3, 2016
Read the statement in full below.
An official statement from the Full Frontal team. pic.twitter.com/mxZ6pVSjQ6
— Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (@FullFrontalSamB) August 3, 2016