CNN host Erin Burnett asked viewers Tuesday night to “excuse my language” after she read out an alleged quote in which former president Donald Trump reportedly fumed about the cost for a deceased soldier’s funeral and called her “a f---ing Mexican.”
On her show OutFront, Burnett and guests discussed a bombshell report published Tuesday by The Atlantic which detailed a December 2020 White House meeting in which Trump allegedly disparaged the U.S. Army soldier Vanessa Guillén.
Houston-born Guillén, 20, was murdered earlier that year by another soldier in Fort Hood, Texas. Trump invited her parents to the White House and promised to personally pay for their daughter’s funeral. “If you need help with the funeral financially, I will help,” he told them in the Oval Office.
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Despite his gracious overtures in public, The Atlantic reported Trump was enraged when an aide informed him of the $60,000 cost of the ceremony.
“It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican!” he reportedly said, before turning to his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and ordering, “Don’t pay it!” Meadows said, in a tweet, that The Atlantic’s report is “absolutely false.”
When it came time for Burnett to read the excerpt on her show, she read Trump’s alleged mark out loud before quickly catching herself.
“Excuse my language there,” she said. “I just read it. But that’s what he said.”
The Atlantic said an attorney for Guillén’s family confirmed that they received no money from Trump despite sending a bill to the White House. However, the attorney accused the story’s author, Jeffrey Goldberg, of misrepresenting their conversation and lying, in a tweet.
Guillén’s sister also dismissed the report as “exploiting my sister’s death for politics” in a tweet, adding: “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
