Arts & Entertainment
Kathy Griffin: ‘Trump is trying to ruin my life’ following photo scandal
the comedian believes she is being attacked because she is a woman

(Screenshot via YouTube.)
Kathy Griffin broke down into tears during a press conference on Friday morning as she apologized for participating in a controversial photo shoot and slammed the Trump family for attacking her.
Victim rights attorney Lisa Bloom appeared with Griffin to say the backlash Griffin received for the photo shoot has been extreme.
“As a result of the first family bullying her, she has been vilified, getting death threats, fired from multiple jobs and had multiple events canceled,” Bloom says.
The photo shoot, which featured Griffin holding up a bloody replica of Trump’s decapitated head, has gotten her fired from co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve special and lost her an ad campaign deal with Squatty Potty. Five of Griffin’s comedy shows have also been canceled.
“I don’t think I will have a career after this,” Griffin said as she broke down into tears. “I’m going to be honest. He broke me. He broke me. He broke me. And then I was like, this isn’t right. And I apologized because that was the right thing to do and I meant it and then I saw the tide turning and it was a mob pile-on.”
Griffin reiterated her apology from the video she posted to Twitter on Tuesday and says she didn’t mean to offend anyone.
“That apology absolutely stands,” Griffin says. “I feel horrible. I have performed in war zones. The idea that this made people think of that tragedy is horrible. If I could redo the whole thing I’d have a blowup doll and no ketchup.”
She accused Trump of “trying to ruin her life forever” after Trump, his son Trump Jr. and First Lady Melania Trump expressed their outrage of the image on Twitter and to the media.
“The sitting president of the United States and his grown children and the first lady are personally trying to ruin my life forever. Forever. You guys know him — he’s never gonna stop,” Griffin says.
Griffin believes the attacks are “a woman thing” and that she is being used as a distraction from the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s connection with Russia.
“It’s quite clear they’re trying to use me as a distraction and I’m not going to be collateral damage for this fool,” Griffin says. “I’m the easiest target. I’m D-list comedian Kathy Griffin.”
Griffin has received support from fellow comedians Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx. Carey told Entertainment Tonight it’s a comedian’s job to break boundaries.
“I think it is the job of a comedian to cross the line at all times, because that line is not real,” Carrey says. “If you step out into that spotlight and you’re doing the crazy things that [Trump] is doing, we’re the last line of defense. And really, comedians are the last voice of truth in this whole thing.”
Foxx says he acknowledges Griffin went too far but still stands by her.
“I still love Kathy Griffin,” Foxx told Entertainment Tonight. “She went past the line, she’ll pay for it in the way she pays for it, and we’ll go out and we’ll laugh with her again. 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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