President Trump: ‘Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself’

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer

Hours after Kathy Griffin issued an apology for a photo of herself holding a bloody, fake head of President Trump, the commander in chief did not sound like he was any mood to accept it.

“Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday. “My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!”

Griffin posted the image, taken by celebrity photographer Tyler Shields, to Twitter on Tuesday.

“I caption this ‘there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his … wherever,'” Griffin tweeted.

The comedian was swiftly, and widely, criticized for it.

“Disgusting but not surprising,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “This is the left today. They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?”

“Our politics have become too base, too low, & too vulgar,” former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tweeted, “but Kathy Griffin’s post descends into an even more repugnant & vile territory.”

“This is vile and wrong,” Chelsea Clinton tweeted. “It is never funny to joke about killing a president.”

Anderson Cooper, who has co-hosted CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage with Griffin, also condemned the post.

“For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in,” he tweeted. “It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.”

“Thank you,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted in response. “Will you work with her again if @CNN has her back in air? Asking for a lot of people.”

CNN said initially that it was “evaluating” its relationship with Griffin.

“We found what she did disgusting and offensive,” CNN said in a statement. “We are pleased to see she has apologized and asked that the photos be taken down. We are evaluating our New Year’s Eve coverage and have made no decisions at this point.”

On Wednesday morning, the cable network said it had terminated its agreement with the comedienne.

Griffin’s photo caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service, which noted that such “threats against [our] protectees receive the highest priority of all of our investigations.”

On Tuesday evening, Griffin removed the image and posted a video apology.

“I sincerely apologize,” she said. “I am just now seeing the reaction to these images. I’m a comic. I crossed the line. I move the line. Then I cross it. I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people. It wasn’t funny. I get it. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career. I will continue. I ask your forgiveness.”

It’s not the first time a celebrity has come under fire for violent imagery involving Trump.

In March, the rapper Snoop Dogg appeared in a music video aiming a gun at a clown that depicted the president.

“Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama?” Trump responded on Twitter. “Jail time!”

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