(JTA) — Bette Midler apologized for a series of tweets in which she insulted Melania Trump’s Slovenian-accented English.
The Jewish singer-actress wrote the mocking tweets during the first lady’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. The tweets have been deleted.
“#beBest is back! A UGE bore! She can speak several words in a few languages. Get that illegal alien off the stage!” was Midler’s first tweet, which was saved in screenshots. Another said “Oh, God. She still can’t speak English.”
“Anodyne, anodyne, nothing but simple minded pablum. ‘I have to remind myself that I am very lucky.’ I completely agree! You are one lucky Slovenian! And after all that surgery, you hit a kind of horrible jackpot, chained to an colossal idiot,” she also tweeted.
When other Twitter users called out Midler for her tweets, she tweeted, “Why not? Just giving them a taste of their own immigrant bashing medicine. I guess they’re not keen.”
Midler also tweeted during other Tuesday night speeches.
On Wednesday, she acknowledged that she was wrong to mock the first lady.
“Well, all hell has broken loose because I said Melania ‘still can’t speak English’ last night. I was wrong to make fun of her accent. America is made up people who speak with all kinds of accents, and they are all welcomed always,” she tweeted.
Some of Midler’s critics noted that Melania Trump speaks five languages — Slovenian, English, French, Italian and German — and told the actress that she was being unnecessarily mean.