Good evening, I’m Samantha Bee,

Last week, I used the c-word, as I have many times before, but this time all hell broke loose. I understand why. In the past, I’ve used the c-word to demystify the preciousness of female anatomy, to reclaim the word by using it humorously. It’s not my favorite word and if I wrote the rules the world wouldn’t need to hear it at all, except perhaps as a term of endearment or a compliment. “Sweetheart, I love your cunt.” “Thank you, honey.”

But last week I was faced with a news report so inconceivable, so beyond my understanding of acceptable behavior on the part of my government, that it struck at the core of my identity as a mother, as an American, and as a human being. I can’t remember the last time I was so enraged.

*thinking*

Okay, I can. When we adopted a shih tzu and she refused to be house-trained. Wouldn’t crap outside. Just didn’t care. It was 18 months of finding dog crap in the living room, dog crap in the kitchen, dog crap in the bathroom… I finally realized “This dog is trying to break me, and it’s working.” I secretly started calling her Shitty Shih tzu, and then one day I was eating breakfast and she walked indoors, turned in a circle and took a crap right at my feet, then looked over her shoulder and kicked it back at me.

It was at that moment I had the urge to kick the dog. I know! I know. The urge, mind you, because I have never kicked a dog in my life and I would never kick a dog…unless it viciously attacked a child.

People might say “Sam, it sounds like you’re trying to draw some sort of analogy between a gut-level response to a dog attacking a child and…how is that similar to grown men physically removing a child from the arms of her mother and putting her in a cage or in a home with complete strangers, with no plan to reunite her with her mother? That’s not terrifying for the child the way…the way an attacking dog would be.” Okay.

Ivanka Trump is part of the White House staff. I have no idea what her title is. I’m not sure she knows. She has an office above her dad’s. Americans pay for it.

I also have no idea if Ivanka’s staff of political strategists are paid by the American government. She probably doesn’t know that either. But I assume they are on the government payroll because they were definitely working overtime last weekend to get their message out on her instagram account and, you know, the Trump family doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to paying their workers. Would you work through the weekend if you thought you might not get paid?

Ivanka speaks to the president whenever she wants to, purportedly every day, and she travels abroad at the expense of American taxpayers to meet with foreign dignitaries on behalf of the American government. She is a highly recognizable face of the Trump administration. Which is to say: It’s Ivanka’s job to know what issues are in the news, what topics are important to the American people, and to doggedly promote her father’s policies when they have a PR crisis. She knows what she’s doing when she posts a picture of her child laughing, safe and happy on a weekend when people were outraged to learn about children being separated from their parents by American authorities at our borders. She was sending a political message. The left is worked up over nothing. We take good care of our kids. See?

To Ivanka, her staff, and the president, I am sorry I used the c-word publicly, in anger. It brought me down to your level. However, you should know that many of us….many, many, MANY of us…continue to use all kinds of unsavory words in private, because only a gutless, heartless, cynical nightmare of a human being would post that picture while American border agents are taking children away from their parents. Your immigration policy is revolting, and I speak for many Americans when I say: We don’t condone these practices. Find a different solution. That’s your job.

And to Ivanka, mother to mother, I say: Be a moral leader on this issue, honey, not a maniacal shih tzu.