After spending much of the week dealing with backlash for posing in a photo with a faux decapitated head of President Donald Trump, Kathy Griffin told reporters on Friday that she’d suffered bullying from Trump’s family — but vowed to mock the president even more in the future.
“The death threats that I am getting are constant and they are detailed,” Griffin told reporters at the press conference. “This president, of all people, is going to come after me? He picked the wrong redhead.”
Griffin added, “I’m gonna make fun of the president, and you know what? I’m going to make fun of him more now.”
Griffin — who has apologized for the bloody image posted Tuesday by photographer Tyler Shields — confirmed that she is the target of a Secret Service investigation over the image. Her attorney, Lisa Bloom, asserted that Trump is “using the power of the federal government against” Griffin, calling the situation “outrageous and unprecedented.”
The comedian, who was dropped as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve program as the result of the uproar, noted that she has had multiple other appearances canceled. Calling Trump a “bully,” she added, “a sitting president of the United States and his grown children and the First Lady are personally, I feel … trying to ruin my life forever.”
Since the photo went public on Tuesday, Trump derided her as “sick” on Twitter, while First Lady Melania Trump questioned the comedian’s mental state on social media. During the Friday press conference, Griffin said that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has also waged a campaign against her.
Despite her vow to continue mocking Trump, Griffin, who apologized for the image earlier this week, told reporters, “That apology absolutely stands. I feel horrible.”
If she had to do it all over again, Griffin added, “I would have had a blow-up doll and no ketchup.”
Griffin also suggested that Trump and his administration are trying to divert attention from an FBI investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia by going after her. “They’re using me as a shiny object,” she said.
“I’m not going to be collateral damage for this fool,” Griffin asserted. “I think he’s a fool.”
The comedian asserted that the photo was not intended as a threat to Trump. Griffin explained that the photo was meant to parody a comment Trump made about then-Fox News personality Megyn Kelly, that Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” when she grilled him during a presidential debate.
Griffin recalled thinking, “Let’s make this really obvious that I’m making a really absurdist, statement-y thing.”
At one point during the conference, Griffin choked up, telling reporters, “I’m going to be honest, he broke me.”
Griffin also suggested that sexism played a factor in the response to her failed attempt at humor, asserting that a male comedian would have gotten a different reaction if he had pulled a similar stunt. “This is a woman thing,” she said. “I’m just gonna come out and say it.”
7 People Defending Kathy Griffin After Decapitated Trump Photo Shoot (Photos)
Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.
Jim Carrey came to Griffin's defense when asked about the photo at the premiere of his Showtime series "I'm Dying Up Here." Carrey told Entertainment Tonight that it's Griffin's duty to "cross the line at all times," adding that comedians are the "last line of defense."
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Ricky Gervais also defended Griffin in an interview with TheWrap, saying that the photo was in poor taste, but ultimately harmless. "The only way you could say she went wrong was that it was a bit crass," Gervais said. "It wasn't great art. But OK, let’s say it was bad art. So what? Nobody got hurt. That wasn’t a real head."
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The photographer Tyler Shields is also defending the photo as an artistic statement and an expression of his First Amendment right to free speech. "There’s the famous quote, 'I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to say it,'” Shields told Entertainment Weekly. "I might not agree with [Trump], she definitely doesn’t agree with him, but I’ll defend my right to be able to say whatever I want until I die."
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"I still love Kathy Griffin," Jamie Foxx told Entertainment Tonight, when asked about the backlash. "Don't kill the comedian! There's a lot of people out here doing really bad things and every time a comedian says anything, says something about peanuts, [people say], 'You're peanut-shaming!' [A comedian] says something about dolphins [people say], 'Oh my god, you're a dolphin-shamer.' We're the comics, we're entertainers, we don't mean any harm."
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Former CNN star Larry King took a similar stance, saying the image was “in terrible taste,” but ultimately expressing sympathy for Griffin as a friend. “She’s my friend. She made a mistake. She apologized. Let it go," King told TMZ, adding that he would not have fired Griffin had he been running CNN.
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‘Inside Amy Schumer’ writer Mike Lawrence came down on Griffin for apologizing for the stunt in a post on Facebook. “You know what you did and should own it. It wasn’t a riff onstage or a joke you had done once or twice," he wrote. "You wanted a reaction and got it. So live in it. Don’t apologize."
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Rosie O’Donnell tweeted about Griffin’s stunt by saying that she “didn’t find it funny at all.” But the longtime Trump critic has also retweeted a number of messages from users who say that similar actions — including people burning or lynching effigies of Barack Obama — have not been met with the same level of outrage.
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Civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom announced on Thursday that she will represent Griffin, and will host a press conference on Friday to "explain the true motivation behind the image, and respond to the bullying from the Trump family she has endured."
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Griffin has been criticized from both the left and the right, but a few people are standing by her
Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.