Earlier this week, conservative commentator Ann Coulter offered her explanation for using the word “retard” to describe President Barack Obama. And on Friday night’s broadcast of CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” in an appearance to promote her book “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” Coulter was pushed to reiterate that defense by host Piers Morgan.

But Morgan segued into a commercial break by suggesting Coulter “calm down” after she began her response.

MORGAN: Let’s take another break. Let you calm down a bit.

COULTER: Oh, yes. I think you could move on to a better subject.

MORGAN: It’s an interesting subject.

COULTER: No, it isn’t.

Coulter apparently took issue with that, and during commercial she called Morgan a “sexist misogynist pig.” When the show returned from the commercial break, Coulter explained her charge.

MORGAN: You called me in the break a sexist misogynist pig.

COULTER: Yes.

MORGAN: Can you explain why? What have I said that’s been remotely sexist?

COULTER: “Calm down.” Oh, it is the conservative —

MORGAN: You were hyperventilating.

COULTER: I’m not hyperventilating. I’m disagreeing with you, which apparently is insulting your teeny tiny male ego. It is the most insulting, condescending, sexist thing to say to a female, generally conservative, who disagrees with you. No, it’s my obligation to back down and accept your point. And if I don’t, you’re not being calm.

One thing Coulter gained from the use of the word “retard” in that tweet last week was getting invited on Morgan’s show after being “banned for life” in 2011. Coulter had canceled a scheduled appearance on “Piers Morgan Tonight” in July 2011 and appeared on Morgan’s competition, Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” that night instead.

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