Kathy Griffin sobbed at a press conference in 2017 and told the world that Donald Trump "broke her."
Now she just confirmed she spent years sitting next to him at parties while he laughed at her jokes.
She proved the photo was real – and accidentally proved something else she never intended to admit.
The Photo She Could Not Pretend Away
A smiling Kathy Griffin posing at an event with Donald Trump is making the rounds online.
MAGA accounts posted it.
Griffin's fans pushed back.
So Griffin got on YouTube Tuesday and cleared it up herself.
"I know, can you f—ing believe it?" she said, pulling out the actual dress from the photo to prove it was real.
"There was a time I knew Donald as someone who would show up at the opening of an envelope," Griffin admitted, "and I would sit next to him sometimes, and he'd laugh at my jokes."
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She estimated the photo was roughly 20 years old.
She also confirmed a second photo exists – herself, Trump, and financial personality Suze Orman – and called it a perfect capture of the 2000s celebrity circuit.
"I would just run into Donald quite often at events," she said, "and he was ever-present."
The Same Woman Who Posed With His Fake Severed Head
In May 2017, Griffin staged a photo shoot holding a prop designed to look like President Trump's head.
The backlash was immediate and bipartisan – Chelsea Clinton condemned it, Anderson Cooper condemned it on air.
Griffin lost her CNN New Year's Eve co-hosting gig on the spot.
Multiple venues canceled her tour dates.
The Secret Service opened a federal investigation, and she faced potential charges of conspiracy to assassinate the president – an investigation that lasted two months before she was cleared.
Trump tweeted that his son Barron, 11 years old at the time, was traumatized by the image.
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Griffin cried at a press conference, said Trump "broke her," and declared she would never have a career again.
Then she retracted the apology.
Then she said she was "proud" of the photo.
Then she said she was "ahead of her time."
The Pattern Hollywood Never Acknowledges
Griffin is not an outlier.
The entire pre-2016 celebrity class partied with Donald Trump, appeared on his television shows, attended his weddings, and smiled for exactly these kinds of photos.
Arnold Schwarzenegger filmed The Celebrity Apprentice with Trump and had his hotel moved to a Trump property during the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Russell Simmons called Trump "my man" and talked openly about visiting Mar-a-Lago regularly.
The moment Trump ran for president as a Republican, the same people who laughed at his jokes and posed for smiling photos with him discovered he was a fascist.
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Griffin now calls him "someone I used to know, but now I don't care to know any longer."
She does not say she was wrong about who he was.
She says she no longer cares to know him – as if removing Trump from her social calendar is a moral statement rather than a career calculation that backfired spectacularly.
What She Actually Proved
Griffin posted that YouTube video to prove the image was not AI-generated.
She succeeded.
She also proved something she did not intend to.
The man she held a fake head of – the man she called a threat to democracy so dangerous that a mock decapitation counted as satire – was the same man she cheerfully sat beside at parties for the better part of two decades.
She knew exactly who Donald Trump was.
He laughed at her jokes.
She loved the photos.
Then the politics became more valuable than the friendship, the stunt became more valuable than the relationship, and the apology became more valuable than the truth – until the apology itself stopped being valuable and she retracted that too.
Hollywood calls this courage.
The rest of America calls it what it is.
Sources:
- Lindsay Kornick, "Kathy Griffin addresses old photo of her and Trump appearing to be friendly," Fox News, June 11, 2026.
- "Kathy Griffin Reveals Death Threats & Secret Service Probe: Trump 'Broke Me,'" Deadline, June 2, 2017.
- "Kathy Griffin says she faced potential 'conspiracy to assassinate the president' charge over Trump head photo," The Hill, December 8, 2018.
- "Every Celebrity Donald Trump Has Feuded With," Newsweek, July 31, 2024.