CNN anchor Erin Burnett apologized to viewers on Tuesday, Oct. 22 when she accidentally said a curse word during a live broadcast. Burnett was reading a quote from former President Donald Trump, who reportedly referred to deceased U.S. soldier Vanessa Guillén as “a f-ing Mexican.” Burnett read the quote verbatim and the network’s censors did not catch the mistake, leading to an awkward moment.
Burnett hosts CNN’s OutFront, and on Tuesday she and her guests were discussing a recent report by The Altantic which included an anonymous source who was close to Trump in late 2020. At the time, Trump was just receiving the bill for Guillén’s funeral after promising to pay for it on national TV. When he saw the numbers, he allegedly said: It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f-ing Mexican! Don’t pay it!” Burnett read this alleged quote out loud, apparently not realizing at first that the censors had missed her slip-up.
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“Excuse my language there,” Burnett said. “I just read it. But that’s what he said, so…” The moment has not circulated widely online, but it was isolated in a video by Mediaite. On social media, commenters let Burnett know that her reading had gone completely unfiltered. Some were amused and some were offended, but most seemed to understand and forgive the slip-up. One person on X – formerly Twitter – wrote: “Am I a bad person for thinking Erin Burnett’s F bomb on CNN was funny and that it made my night?”
It’s worth noting that a spokesperson for Trump has denied The Atlantic report on which Burnett’s piece was based. However, according to the original piece, the quote was verified by “attendees” and “contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant.” The Guillén family’s attorney, Natalie Khawam, said that Trump never paid the family has he had promised. Because Guillén was enlisted in the U.S. Army at the time, some funeral costs were covered by the military, while others were covered by private donations.
Guillén was 20 years old when she was bludgeoned to death by fellow soldier Aaron David Robinson at Fort Hood in Texas. The killer and his girlfriend burned Guillén’s body, which was eventually discovered buried in a riverbank near the base. The case prompted Congress to consider significant reforms within the military. Fort Hood is reportedly considered a particularly dangerous place for female soldiers to be assigned.
The case resulted in the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act, which was passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in December of 2021. It changed the way that sexual harassment reports and investigations are handled within the military in order to reduce the chances of conflicts of interest. Guillén’s family filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Army in August of 2022, seeking $35 million in damages for sexual harassment, assault and wrongful death. That lawsuit is still underway.
