CNN panel flips out over Trump's 'sexist' salad joke at the White House celebration for Clemson

A CNN panel accused President Donald Trump of being sexist for joking about his wife, Melania Trump, making salads for the Clemson Tigers football team.

The White House hosted team at the White House Monday night to celebrate their win over the Alabama Crimson Tide in the national championship game on Jan. 7.

His comments sparked a debate on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" show.

What did Trump say about salads?

Trump told the football players that most of his kitchen staff wasn't working because of the partial government shutdown but that he still wanted to feed them when they visited the White House.

"So, I had a choice, do we have no food for you because we have a shutdown or do we give you some little quick salads that the first lady will make along with the second lady," Trump said. "They'll make some salads."

"And I said you guys aren't into salads," Trump continued. "Or do I go out and send out for 1,000 hamburgers? Big Macs. So we actually did that."

The crowd laughed at the president's joke.

What did the CNN panel say?

"That's appalling," CNN political analyst Joan Walsh said. "It seems to me that the president will not be happy until there is one single female Republican voter in the country. It's incredibly sexist."

Walsh went even further with her negative interpretation of Trump's comments by assuming that the president was referring to Ivanka Trump as the second lady.

I don't why I'm stuck on this but Ivanka is not the second lady. She's actually, I don't think she deserves this position, she's actually a senior adviser to the president. So the idea that he would demean her specifically in that way he shouldn't talk about the first lady that way. We aren't all here to make salads for men. It's disgusting.

Burnett pointed out that Trump was referring to Vice President Mike Pence's wife, Karen Pence, in his mention of the second lady.

"Sometimes what people say when they're being funny exposes exactly who they are and what they think," Burnett said. "Not that there was any question, but this is pretty clear."

Scott Jennings, the only Republican on the panel, defended the president's joke.

"I certainly didn't take his comments to be sexist," Jennings said.

Walsh gasped at Jennings' remark.

"So then Mike Pence maybe could have made the salads?" Walsh fired back.

"Can I just ask you, how in the world do you not perceive that as sexist?" Burnett sneered. "To say the assumption that his wife's going to go make salads for a bunch of football players. What is she, like the cook?"

"Well, I didn't hear it that way," Jennings responded.

"She's Donna Reed," Walsh interrupted.

"I eat salad almost every night for dinner," Jennings said. "We eat a lot of salads in the Jennings household."

Then Burnett asked Jennings if he expected his wife to make all his salads.

"I make some and she makes some," he answered.

Jennings told the women that he took the president's remarks as a joke.

"It didn't strike me that way," he said. "I think he was trying to make a joke about feeding hamburgers to football players. I think you might be overreading this one."

But Burnett insisted the salad joke was sexist.

"I'm not overreading it," she responded. "He made a joke that was sexist about women."