Kathy Griffin knows what it’s like to face Donald Trump’s wrath. Now, she’s sharing her thoughts on Rosie O’Donnell’s ongoing feud with the president.
Trump and O’Donnell have been sparring since the comedian and former talk show host’s days on The View nearly two decades ago. That animosity hit a fever pitch in July when the president threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship. Since then, the White House has released several scathing statements about O’Donnell and the current hosts of The View.
Griffin drew parallels between Trump’s attacks on O’Donnell and attacks she, herself, confronted on a recent episode of Chelsea Handler’s Dear Chelsea podcast. The comedian said she lost 75 percent of her friends after she published a photo simulating a beheaded Trump in 2017. Griffin says she still fields criticism for the image to this day.
The comedian said the backlash over the infamous photo was an “overreaction,” and that now “Trump and his machine” are going after O’Donnell for the same reasons they did her.
“When my incident happened, it was three days after Robert Mueller was appointed,” Griffin said. “I think that’s why he used me as that deflection. I think he went after Rosie last weekend because he’s on videotape with Jeffrey Epstein dancing at a party with minors.”
Griffin’s blowup with Trump happened shortly after news broke that former FBI director Robert Mueller would oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. This included potential collusion between Trump associates and Russia.
Trump was not charged with any crime, but Mueller later shared 10 instances in which the president may have obstructed justice.
Kathy Griffin and Rosie O’Donnell in July 2022.
Amy Sussman/Getty
Trump recently threatened O’Donnell’s citizenship amid growing backlash from his supporters over his dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The View cohosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg had been vocal about the Epstein files around this time.
O’Donnell moved to Ireland earlier this year in protest of the Trump administration’s policies, and she later speculated that The View would be canceled over its politics.
“Because it’s not enough to run the country into the ground, you have to control what people see, what they hear, what they think,” O’Donnell wrote in a TikTok post. “And The View? Well, that’s a little too much woman — a little too much truth, a little too much Joy Behar saying things like, ‘I don’t think the insurrection was a tourist visit, Karen.’ Apparently, the truth is dangerous now.”
The View is currently on hiatus but will return for season 29 on Sept. 8 at 11 a.m. ET/10 a.m. PT on ABC.Â
Check out the full episode of Dear Chelsea with Griffin below.