Comedienne Kathy Griffin defended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel after President Trump called for his firing.
Griffin revealed her thoughts about the controversy during an interview on the Talk Your Head Off podcast on Tuesday, reflecting upon when her career torpedoed after she posed for a photograph of herself holding a bloodied, severed head of President Trump during her first term.
“I’m just gonna be honest: It still hurts. It was nine years ago for me … It still hurts that nobody did stuff like this for me where they would dedicate a whole episode to just standing up for the First Amendment,” she said of the defense that Kimmel had been receiving. “Because my First Amendment rights were truly violated because I had the actual Department of Justice coming after me, not a private company, so that’s what’s happening to Jimmy right now.”
On Monday, both the president and the first lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel after he joked about Trump’s death during a mock White House Correspondents Dinner, referring to Melania Trump as an “expectant widow.”
“Jimmy Kimmel, who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren’t, and never would be. He then stated, ‘Our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.’ A day later, a lunatic tried entering the ballroom of the White House Correspondents Dinner, loaded up with a shotgun, handgun, and many knives. He was there for a very obvious and sinister reason. I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence… Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”
Kimmel later said he meant it to be a “light roast joke.”
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that,” Kimmel said. “I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence, in particular. But I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend. And probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do. And I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.”