No laughing matter. Samantha Bee sent a sassy message to her own network after TBS tweeted out a video comparing Hillary Clinton to a hyena.
As day one of the Democratic National Convention was winding down Monday, July 25, TBS posted on Twitter, “Move over Donkey! There’s a new mascot in town… #ImWithHyena.” It included a 24-second video clip titled “Hillary Clinton’s Call of the Wild,” which featured footage of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee laughing intercut with cackling hyenas.
The tweet, which was a not-very-funny play on Clinton’s campaign slogan “I’m With Her,” was created by the TBS-owned parody website The Heckler and reposted to the network’s main account two days later.
The Full Frontal With Samantha Bee star, 46, replied in a since-removed tweet, “Delete your account.” The comedian borrowed the line from Clinton herself, who tweeted the same insult at Donald Trump after he posted about Barack Obama endorsing “Crooked Hillary.”
The network later owned up to its mistake and issued an apology. “This post was obviously a poor attempt at humor and has been taken down,” TBS said in a statement Tuesday, July 26, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Moving forward, we’ll leave political satire to professionals like Samantha Bee.”
Bee has been a breakout star for the network since her late-night talk show premiered in February. Last week, the show broadcasted live from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and this week she’s filming from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
During her RNC coverage, Bee slammed Trump as “a sociopathic 70-year-old toddler” and called his speech “fear-mongering.” She also dedicated a segment to getting Trump supporters at the convention to acknowledge Black Lives Matter.