Jon Stewart defended his former Daily Show collaborator Samantha Bee in a recent interview, dismissing the notion that the Full Frontal host's controversial description of Ivanka Trump as a "feckless cunt" offended the president. "They don't give a shit about the word 'cunt,'" the comedian said of the White House during a Sunday Q&A with the San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Beast reports. "That is probably – [President Trump] says that instead of 'please,' I'm guessing."

Bee hurled the headline-generating insult during a recent episode of her TBS series, Full Frontal, in the closing moments of a segment about the migrant crisis at the U.S. border. The host apologized to Ivanka and viewers in a statement, noting that she "crossed a line" in using the expletive.

Nonetheless, both White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and President Trump called for the show's cancellation. "Why aren't they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show? A total double standard but that's O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come," Trump – who has been accused of using the word "cunt" himself numerous times – tweeted on Friday.

Stewart, in the Q&A, pegged the White House's Bee response to a "victim" mentality. "It's a game," he said. "It's a strategy. And it's working." The former late-night veteran – on-hand promoting a stand-up gig at the Cluterfest comedy festival (which precedes a joint tour with Dave Chappelle) – also instructed liberals to avoid getting "caught in a trap of thinking you can live up to a code of integrity that will be enough for the propagandist right. There isn't.

"Create your own moral code to live by, but don't be fooled into trying to make concessions that you think will mollify them," Stewart continued. Elsewhere, he added, "Please understand that a lot of what the right does, and it's maybe their greatest genius, is they've created a code of conduct that they police, that they themselves don't have to, in any way, abide."