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NextImg:Kathy Griffin Rips Stephen Colbert For 'Bulls**t Ambush' Over Severed Trump Head
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Kathy Griffin has some choice words for fellow comedian Stephen Colbert.

Griffin argued Tuesday on her show “Talk Your Head Off” that the 2018 “Late Show” interview she had with Colbert was a “bullshit ambush” over the infamous photo she took a year earlier with a bloodied prop of President Donald Trump’s head.

“I didn’t want them to be aware of what was really happening,” she said about Colbert’s audience. “Because what was really happening was a bullshit ambush. But I thought that was such a low blow. And there’s a thing in comedy called punching up or punching down.”

“I’m very much on the D-list. Everybody knows that,” Griffin explained, adding: “And Stephen Colbert is an A-list comic. He has accomplished just about everything you can as a comedian and he’s wildly talented and he’s obviously very bright, but man — what a dick.”

Griffin faced widespread criticism after posing for photographer Tyler Shields with the fake Trump head. She was not only fired as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve programming but also questioned by the Secret Service — and faced potential criminal charges.

Griffin said Tuesday that she was told only shortly before the interview that Colbert would raise the subject, despite her prior request that he not. When she defended the photo by pointing to free speech laws enshrined by the First Amendment, Colbert pushed back.

“There are limits to, though, what you can say about the president of the United States,” the CBS host argued during the December 2018 broadcast, “having specifically to do with harm against the president of the United States.”

When Griffin noted that she didn’t cause any, Colbert replied, “Well, you were holding up a severed head” — leading her to state “it was a mask” covered in ketchup. Griffin said Tuesday the confrontation was “laced with misogyny” and that she held back tears during the interview.

She recalled fully bursting into tears after the segment and said a producer rushed over to explain Colbert “just couldn’t get over the picture” because he’s “really Catholic.” While her emotional distress flew under the radar at the time, Griffin believes Colbert was aware of it.

Representatives for Colbert did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.

Kathy Griffin and Stephen Colbert chat on "The Late Show" on Dec. 6, 2018. On Tuesday, Griffin called Colbert's questions for her in that segment a "bullshit ambush."
Kathy Griffin and Stephen Colbert chat on "The Late Show" on Dec. 6, 2018. On Tuesday, Griffin called Colbert's questions for her in that segment a "bullshit ambush."
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

“I don’t think the audience could tell that my eyes filled up,” she said Tuesday. “I do think Stephen could tell. It did not stop him. I did not feel he had any empathy, but I did feel he had an understanding of what was happening. And that’s what made it worse.”

The comic went on to note that she was a huge fan of his “subversive” earlier work on “The Colbert Report,” which excoriated hypocritical politicians on a nightly basis from 2005 to 2014, but that, in regard to his “Late Night” gig, she will “never be on the show again.”

“I have such a low opinion of Stephen Colbert now,” she explained. “He’s not going to hear about this, but if he does, he’ll probably issue one of those statements saying I made the whole thing up and that I’m irrelevant and that he didn’t know I was crying, blah, blah, blah.”

Griffin previously revealed that the death threats she received as a result of the photo were so relentless that she got addicted to painkillers — and secretly tried to take her life. In 2023, Griffin disclosed she had an “extreme case” of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Watch the full episode from YouTube below: