Comedian Kathy Griffin said an old photo of herself sitting next to President Donald Trump at an event is real, pushing back on speculation that the image was generated or altered.
At the beginning of a video posted Tuesday to her YouTube channel, Griffin said several people had sent her the photo, which shows her seated amicably beside Trump years before their public feud. Griffin described Trump as “someone I used to know, but now I don’t care to know any longer.”
She confirmed the image was authentic and said there was a period when she and Trump were friendly in social settings.
“I know, can you f—ing believe it?” Griffin said. “There was a time I knew Donald as someone who would show up at the opening of an envelope, and I would sit next to him sometimes, and he’d laugh at my jokes. I’m not glorifying him in his last, final days in any way. I want to show you that is not an AI photo, and that’s why I got the dress out, which I still fit into by the way because that picture’s got to be 20 years old.”
Griffin said the photo was part of a larger group of images from the 2000s, when she would often run into Trump at public events. Despite her sharp criticism of him in recent years, she admitted there was one image of herself, Trump, and financial television personality Suze Orman that she still liked.
“It captures the 2000s so much, where I would just run into Donald quite often at events, and he was ever-present,” Griffin said.
She also addressed conservatives who have circulated older pictures of her with Trump, saying some use them to accuse her of hypocrisy because of her later political attacks against him.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m aware there are many pictures of me with Donald on the internet, and MAGA people love to post them and act like I’m a phony when I acted like I jokingly, Perseus-style, wanted to decapitate him in a photo that’s been memorialized over and over again which I stand by because it was satire,” Griffin said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
Griffin’s relationship with Trump became nationally controversial in 2017, when she posted an image of herself holding a Halloween mask covered in ketchup that appeared to resemble Trump’s severed head. The photo quickly drew backlash from both Republicans and Democrats. Griffin was also investigated by the Secret Service over whether the image represented a threat against the president.
At the time, Griffin apologized for the image, saying she had gone too far. She has since reversed that apology and has repeatedly defended the photo as satire.
In a recent interview, Griffin said she no longer regrets posting it.
“People still define me by it. Now, I really own it, and I absolutely lean into it, because I was right, and I was ahead of my time,” Griffin said.
“And so, when I look at that picture now, I’m very proud of it,” she added.
Griffin’s latest comments show she is aware that the older Trump photos continue to resurface online, especially among critics who argue they conflict with her current views. But she said the pictures are real, and she framed them as evidence of a different period in celebrity and political culture, when Trump was a familiar figure at entertainment events long before his presidency reshaped his public image.
