Alec Baldwin Defends Kathy Griffin, Says Donald Trump Is A ‘Senile Idiot’
Kathy Griffin has found an ally in fellow comedian Alec Baldwin, who recently came to her defense over the Trump photo controversy that has caused a massive backlash, cost her lucrative gigs and endorsements, and might have ended her career.
On Tuesday, Griffin published a photo of herself holding up a bloody, severed head resembling that of President Donald Trump. The image was almost immediately vilified by both Trump supporters and critics, including Chelsea Clinton, who called it “vile and wrong.” Trump himself slammed the photo, saying that his 11-year-old son Barron was “having a hard time” with it and calling Griffin “sick.”
In response to the immediate backlash, the My Life on the D-List star released an apology video on Wednesday in which she admitted that she “went way too far.” On Friday, Baldwin, who played Donald Trump in the previous season of Saturday Night Live, assured Girffin that no one believes she meant to threaten Trump and advised her to “ignore him.”
“Kathy… baby… I’ve been there.”
In a series of tweets, the Trump impersonator told Kathy Griffin that he knows what she’s going through, referencing his own political scandal back in 1998, when he joked about then-Republican politician Henry Hyde and his family on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Kathy Griffin "beheads" Trump in gory photo https://t.co/0IY6qGXjgD pic.twitter.com/4HVSW7bMVI
— The Hill (@thehill) May 30, 2017
“The whole Henry Hyde thing [with] Conan, where we bring out an oxygen mask at the end? [A] joke. That’s what I thought. That’s what we intended.”
“[B]ut all your gutless weasels in the GOP insisted that I actually threatened Hyde,” he wrote. “They played the victim beautifully.”
“Kathy… f**k them. F**k them all. No [one] believes [you] meant [to] threaten Trump. Trump is such a senile idiot, all he has is Twitter fights.”
“[I]gnore him,” he told Griffin. “Like the leaders of all the other countries in the world. Ignore him.”
Though Kathy Griffin has already apologized for posing with a bloody replica of Donald Trump’s head, the scandal drove CNN to drop her from its New Year’s Eve special, which she hosts with Anderson Cooper. As of Friday, all seven of her upcoming comedy tours have been cancelled and she lost her endorsement deal with Squatty Potty, a brand of bathroom footstools.
But Griffin’s friends in the industry have come to her defense. Aside from Baldwin, a handful of comedians and TV hosts have offered their support.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, Jim Carrey said that he thinks it’s the job of comedians “to cross the line at all times — because that line is not real.” The actor also noted that comedians are the “last line of defense” and the “last voice of truth in this whole thing.”
Actor Jamie Foxx also weighed in on the controversy, telling ET on Thursday that comedians sometimes “go beyond, past the line.”
“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.”
TV host Larry King, who told TMZ that Kathy Griffin is a friend of his, admitted that the bloody Trump photo was in “terrible taste” but said that if it was up to him, he wouldn’t have fired her.
Kathy Griffin says Trump is "trying to ruin my life" and that her career is over after severed head photo https://t.co/UzF4N7BT1f pic.twitter.com/7ITY4IabBC
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 4, 2017
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota), a former SNL performer and a friend of Griffin’s, told CNN that the whole mess “had no business being in our public discourse” but that she did the right thing by apologizing and admitting that the Trump photo was a “horrible mistake.”
“She has apologized… she actually begged for forgiveness and I believe in forgiveness.”
On Friday, the embattled Kathy Griffin held a press conference during which she disclosed that she was receiving death threats over the Trump photo and that she was being investigated by the Secret Service.
[Featured Image by John Moore/Getty Images]
