Samantha Bee says on-air she 'crossed the line' calling Ivanka Trump a 'feckless c***'

Samantha Bee said she “crossed the line” last week in calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***”.

The host of TBS’ Full Frontal has addressed the controversy over her comment about President Donald Trump’s daughter and senior White House advisor on last week’s programme.

"I crossed the line. I regret it and I do apologize for it," Ms Bee said, adding that "the problem is, a lot of women have been called that at the worst time in their lives. I don’t want to inflict more pain on them”.

“It is a word that I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it,” Ms Bee said. She jokingly said she “never intended to hurt anyone except [Texas Republican Senator] Ted Cruz”.

In true form, Ms Bee also quipped: “many men were also offended by my use of the word. I do not care about that”. She also noted that the comment “has distracted from more important issues”.

The comedian had uttered the insult after calling the administration “evil” for its practise of separating children from parents at the US-Mexico border if they were caught immigrating without documentation.

Ms Trump had, at the time, tweeted a picture of her hugging one of her three children. Ms Bee called the tweet “oblivious” and said "do something about your dad's immigration practices" before saying the vulgar term.

In the wake of Ms Bee’s comments last week, advertisers like insurance company State Farm and car sale website Autotrader.com pulled their ads from Full Frontal.

Ms Bee apologised the very next day in light of the uproar, 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”.

The network also apologised to viewers and advertisers for letting the expletive air when it likely would have bleeped out per censorship of vulgar language on the cable network.

Several comedians though, came to Ms Bee’s support. Her former boss, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart said the Trump administration does not acutally “give a s*** about the word ‘c**t,’” adding that it was just a ploy by outraged conservatives. "It's a game, it's a strategy and it's working,” he said.

Despite her remorse, Ms Bee was not without words for her critics who said she was being unnecessarily uncivil. Speaking about the administration’s continued separation of families at the border, she said that “civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry more about the niceness of our actions”.