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Kathy Griffin has injected herself into the political conversation again.
Three years after she sparked widespread outrage for posting a gory picture that showed her holding a mock-up of President Trump’s severed head — which got her fired from hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve show — the comedian has made another controversial crack about the commander-in-chief’s well-being.
On Tuesday night, CNN White House correspondent Jim Costa tweeted, “Trump at diabetes event at WH: ‘I don’t use insulin. Should I be?’” And Griffin responded by tweeting, “Syringe with nothing but air inside it would do the trick. F— TRUMP.”
So what’s the big deal with a syringe full of air? Injecting someone with that could create an air embolism, or a potentially fatal blockage of blood vessels that’s caused by air bubbles entering the circulatory system. And many on Twitter TWTR, -2.67% took this as a serious threat, calling her a “national disgrace” and tagging the Secret Service in tweets to investigate her, as well as demanding that the social media site to ban her for life. It led to Griffin’s name trending on Twitter well into Wednesday afternoon, with more than 90,000 tweets mentioning her name as of press time.
But while Griffin had apologized in 2017 for the grisly image of herself holding the president’s decapitated head, which she said had her “blacklisted” in entertainment — and reportedly even put her on the No Fly List of suspected terrorists — she’s showing no remorse this time around.
When the conservative publication Washington Examiner tweeted that Griffin “advocates for someone to stab @realDonaldTrump with a strange full of air,” she responded in all caps with, “I SURE DID, F—ER.”
She also responded to one of the president’s posts about Twitter “stifling free speech” by tweeting, “I feel pretty goddamn superior now knowing I know a hell of a lot more about the #firstamendment than … this mushroom.”
A Twitter spokesperson told the Examiner that the platform will “look into” Griffin’s tweets, although it should be noted that it has let many controversial posts by the president remain on the site.
But Griffin supporters commented that Trump has “done and said way worse,” such as recently tweeting a photo of a coffin with Joe Biden’s name on it, or pushing the conspiracy theory that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough murdered a former staffer. Others pointed out that the president himself was recently under fire for suggesting that injecting disinfectants could treat the coronavirus.
The president hasn’t responded to Griffin’s posts yet.
