Nearly a year after she taped a tearful apology to President Donald Trump for posing with his fake severed head for a photoshoot, Kathy Griffin is taking it back.
“I take the apology back,” the comedian said on The View Monday morning. “Fuck him.” Griffin said the same goes for Don Jr. and Eric Trump, or as she calls them, “Eddie Munster and date rape.”
“Look, I’m not holding back on this family,” she continued. “This president is different and I have been through the mill and so now I’m back on the road.” Reflecting on the overheated backlash that followed her decision to post that infamous photo, Griffin said that even her own mother—an avid Fox News watcher—thought she had joined ISIS.
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Imitating her mother, Griffin said, “‘I love Sean Hannity. When is Bill coming back from vacation?’ She thinks Bill O’Reilly is on vacation.” To which Joy Behar replied, “He thinks so too.”
Griffin said that she does “regret” apologizing to Trump because it just made her “part of the Trump woodchipper, which Michelle Wolf is in now” when all she wanted to do was “make a statement about what a misogynist” the president is. Asked later if she thinks the photo went “too far,” she said, “No, not now. Not when I see his policies.”
“But now you’ve taken the apology back aren’t you frightened they’re going to go after you again now?” Behar asked. “Why do you do that to yourself?”
“It’s important,” Griffin said. “The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason. It’s the first one. And also, I mean the thing is this guy just is different.” She said she doesn’t mean to “disrespect the presidency,” but longs for the times during the Bill Clinton years when a comic “could make fun of that Monica [Lewinsky] dress all day long and nobody thought you were a terrorist.”
The comedian also suggested that Trump was personally behind the decision to have her investigated by the Secret Service for “conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States.” Asked what evidence she has to back up that claim, Griffin said, “Ask Michael Cohen. I’m sure it’s on his phone.”
