Kathy Griffin Recaps Her WHCD Experience

A confident Kathy Griffin told Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s Late Night that she doesn’t “have an ‘F’ left to give.” This time last year, though she was beginning to face a firestorm for posing with what appeared to be the severed head of Donald Trump, Griffin couldn’t have predicted that she’d go from being questioned by FBI agents to descending upon one of the most high-profile events in Washington, D.C., the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which she attended this past Saturday.

“Can you believe it?” she asked Meyers. “A year ago, I’m under a federal investigation for conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States — oh yeah, two-month federal investigation! — and then last weekend I get invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”

Since the dinner, Griffin’s been a staunch defender of fellow comedian Michelle Wolf’s scathing monologue, which Donald Trump, pundits and members of the media have denounced. But Griffin told Meyers that the backlash began during Wolf’s speech.

“What happened was, Michelle started her set, and then that pain in the ass Sarah Huckabee Sanders — who lies to the country every single day, and bullies reporters, and is tearing away at the fabric of the First Amendment, the one I know the best — she’s sitting there with her pissy face,” Griffin said after explaining the layout of the ballroom.

“… then the reporters — like Jon Karl, somebody I respect — then they start giving Michelle Wolf the stink eye,” Griffin said. “The other people on the podium were giving her a look as if she was bombing — and she wasn’t. It’s kind of like a virus. So, the first section gets uncomfortable, then the middle section ,and I’m in the back.”

Griffin added that Sean Spicer — or as she called him, “Spicey” — was near her. “And that one has the nerve to give me the look!” she said, which prompted her to stand up, clap and point at him when Wolf later made a joke at his expense. 

Meyers noted her lack of subtleness, which Griffin brushed off because she thinks Spicer and other Trump confidants are “all going to jail.”

As for the photo shoot, Griffin offered more insight into what was behind the picture.

“I was just trying to make a statement, and truly did not think people would think it was an actual severed head, like I would go to a severed-head warehouse,” Griffin said. 

Meyers didn’t think anyone truly believed the head was real, but when Griffin began to tell a story about the day the photo was released, beginning with, “First of all, Matt Lauer…” she quickly stopped. “Oh, sorry — NBC,” adding a blurred-out hand gesture and a follow-up “Allegedly!”

She also heard from Jim Carrey the day her infamous photo was released, who she said told her, “Kathy, you’re the most famous comedian in the world today. Use it.”

Though she’s now able to talk about the photo candidly, Griffin said back then, she was “part of the Trump wood chipper.” 

“At that time he had only done it to political figures. But what he did to me — it’s historic, it’s never happened where a sitting president has used the power of the Oval Office, and then the Fox News machine,” Griffin said.

She continued, “I honestly did not know they had this apparatus already in place. So they just kind of put me in the Colin Kaepernick wood chipper. And they bring me up on Fox whenever it’s Mueller Time. They bring me up, they bring up Maxine Waters. So I’m now in their group of people to go for.”

Though Griffin has since rescinded the apology she issued for the photo, she told Meyers that its timing might’ve been “too soon.” 

“A lot of people have actually said, like if this had been post-Weinstein, or post-#MeToo, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad,” Griffin said. 

But Griffin said her intentions were simple: to make a statement highlighting Trump’s misogyny and “disgusting” politics.