MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski apologized on the air for her “terrible choice of words” earlier this week when she called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “wannabe dictator’s butt boy.”
“Please allow me to say this face-to face,” Brzezinski said on “Morning Joe” Friday morning. “The term is crass and offensive, and I apologize to everyone, especially the LGBTQ community, and my colleagues for using it. It was a mistake.”
The host, however, did not directly apologize to Pompeo for aiming the term at him.
Brzezinski made the initial comment during the MSNBC morning show Wednesday after a Pompeo appearance on “Fox & Friends” earlier that day. On the Fox program, Pompeo said “some” of what the CIA concluded about Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s death could be inaccurate.
That prompted Brzezinski’s “butt boy” comment about the secretary of state’s relationship to President Trump.
Although the comment was widely viewed as a homophobic slur, Brzezinski clarified in a Twitter post Wednesday that she meant to portray that Pompeo as Trump’s water boy or “toadie” — someone sent to do a boss’s dirty work.
Bzezinski was absent from “Morning Joe” on Thursday, the day after she made the comment, but said it was due to a longtime family commitment.
“I will work hard to be better,” Brzezinski continued in her apology. “I just wanted to say, on camera, looking the viewers straight in the eye: I am really, really sorry.”
