Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert show the pitfalls of using offensive language to attack the Trump presidency

Decider

A year ago, Colbert ran into controversy when he called Trump a "c*ckholster." This week, Bee labeled Ivanka Trump a "feckless c*nt." "Beyond the moral ickiness of getting in the mud with the trolls, when Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee use offensive language, they begin to betray their own cause," says Meghan O'Keefe. "When they deliver a monologue excoriating President Trump, their aim is to mock the President. They can do so with their command of wit, satire, and general creativity. When they go for the lazy reward found in punctuating a joke with a word so bad that standards & practices has to bleep it out, well, then they are becoming like Trump. They’re no better than the crass Commander-in-Chief that they so clearly despise. Moreover, it’s just dumb to lean on profanity to make a case, especially when the powers that be are so good at harnessing that kind of language to fire up their followers."