Kathy Griffin has taken a lot of photos over the years, but for the rest of her life only one of them can be immediately identified as that photo. It’s the photo in which she appears to be clutching Donald Trump’s severed head; the photo that changed her life. Even though she already broke her silence about the notorious photo months ago, Griffin still has a lot to say about it.
On the eve of the photo’s anniversary, Griffin wrote an epic Twitter thread about her experience once it spread online as a warning about what happens when a president with authoritarian leanings unleashes his ire on a private citizen.
A) One year ago today my Trump photo was released. I have planned on doing this thread for a while but the fact that Sarah Sanders brought my name up at the podium today makes it even more appropriate for me to share some thoughts on what happened.
Hope you'll take a look…. pic.twitter.com/kORS1RgfVz
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
Griffin starts off by explaining the intention behind her photo, which was quickly drowned out by assassination talk once it landed online. As she tells it, the photo was meant to draw attention to Trump’s sexism–specifically, his comments about Megyn Kelly.
I) Two things in hindsight. The point was sending a message about his sexism "blood out of her eyes…" – not about an image of a head (or in this case a mask), so I would have probably done a blowup doll instead of a mask. That wouldn't have pleased Trump but wouldn't have
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
Once the photo started to gain traction beyond what Griffin had (perhaps naively) anticipated, she deleted it and taped a video apology. According to her, the apology helped assuage some of the vitriol she’d begun to incur. At least until the following day, when the president tweeted about her. Messages of condemnation from Melania Trump and Donald Trump Jr. would follow.
R) The way I like to look at it is Trump is the most powerful news director and campaign director. A tweet from Obama was just a message..a tweet from Trump is an order to his millions of followers and the news media. And that day I was the target of that order.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
W) By this point with POTUS and FLOTUS weighing in the death threats were coming in at a rate we couldn't keep up with. The FBI told me that there were real credible threats against my life. I had to hire security, people were calling my poor 97-year-old mom threatening her.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
Griffin goes on to describe how the president’s condemnation affected her life. She lost all her regular TV gigs, like CNN’s New Year’s Eve show, and ceased being invited on programs as a guest. People called bomb threats into comedy clubs she’d booked, causing the owners to cancel her shows. She became the subject of a federal investigation. All because of a bloody photo.
OO) Male celebrities who had made statements or put out images that were considered offensive by the Trump crew didn't face any impact. Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg…they went right back to work. I can't see anything but sexism in that.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
As Griffin states multiple times throughout the long thread, the reason she is writing about her experience now is to warn others who are neither wealthy or famous about what could happen upon getting on the presidential shitlist.
DD) It's going to be your daughter or son, your sister or brother, who says something that the president, his family, and their administration find offensive and will have their lives ruined.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) May 31, 2018
By the end of the thread, even some of the prominent voices who had been critical of Griffin’s photo–like former Clinton advisor Philippe Reines, were swayed. Read the whole thing here.