3704 Kathy Griffin Claims "Bullying" From President Trump, Plays Victim
Regular CNN New Year's Eve special host and Democrat supporter Kathy Griffin posed ISIS-style with the bloody severed facsimile head of President Donald Trump. After a massive public outcry, Griffin called a press conference, played the victim and claimed she was bring bullied by "white men" and President Trump. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
So something about this Kathy Griffin, it's been sticking in my head.
It's been churning round and round my brain.
And I think, like I watched a press conference today, which we'll get into, and which I think is extremely revealing.
If you care nothing about Kathy Griffin, and Lord knows she hasn't showed up as a dust mite on my radar throughout my life, but there is something really important to be learned.
I couldn't figure out why is it bothering me so much.
Watching the press conference that she had with her lawyers, it struck me.
When I grew up, my mother was extremely violent, physically abusive, very violent, until when I was about maybe 12 or 13 or so.
I put a stop to it.
I physically restrained her, threw her hand to one side.
And she went from being violent and aggressive To aggrieved and victimized.
That time you attacked me, you know, that kind of stuff.
And this capacity, and maybe it's a gender thing, or maybe it's just a personality thing, this capacity for some people to be incredibly aggressive, and then when people stand up to them, being tearful victims, the crime bully phenomenon, it struck me.
And I'm not putting Kathy Griffin in the same moral category.
And there is something about what she's experiencing that I think is utterly wrong, and I really, really want to speak out strongly against a way in which she's suffering.
But it was, to me, very instructive to watch This press conference.
Of course, there were the usual defenses, you know, that she was engaged in a joke.
She was engaged in political satire.
She was a comedian.
She's trying to make people laugh and so on.
And I find that an extraordinary position.
I mean, don't do this.
But as a thought exercise, imagine publishing a picture of you holding your local police chief's severed head bleeding or your mayor or something like that.
I mean, imagine what the reaction would be.
Imagine you open your mailbox one day and there's a picture of someone holding your severed head.
Hey, that's a great joke.
Wow, that comedian totally killed it.
It's not funny.
She is serious, stern-faced, and she's holding the severed head of a politician.
The idea that this is just a joke, that he's censoring jokes and so on, it's a lot of things.
Comedy, it's not.
And this viper strike of aggression followed by, hey man, can't you take a joke, is very manipulative.
Now, for some reason, and the left understands this, I have a Gender and race into it.
Ah, it's a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me.
Well, this is a...
You understand, this is a dog whistle for rousing the left, for rousing the leftist troops to defend her, you know, like Aragorn showing up with the ghost army, but...
Armies that can't emerge from their basements.
So, a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me.
Now, if a bunch of old white guys are trying to silence Kathy Griffin...
They really haven't done a very good job because in the very same press conference, and this is the kind of brain-twisty stuff that's hard to see until you see it, and then I guess like a picture of her, as she points out in her bikini, it's hard to unsee.
This kind of hypocrisy is astounding because she says, well, it's a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me my whole career, and I'm in a male-dominated field, and they're trying to silence me, trying to silence me.
Can't catch a break.
Well, she's worth $20 million, according to some estimates.
And as she points out in the actual press conference, she's done over 20, like 22, 26 comedy specials, more than any other comedian ever.
Living or dead.
And she's even broken through her own record.
So it is amazing.
You can have the most comedy specials of any comedian.
You can have shown up in a wide variety of forms.
You can stand up.
She points out.
She does TV. She does movies and so on.
You can be worth $20 million and be just about the most successful comedian by some metrics of your generation.
And you can still feel like a victim.
It is truly, truly an astounding situation.
She feels like a victim in the West.
I guess she's not going to be touring Saudi Arabia anytime soon, because then she might actually come into contact with real victims.
And that might be just a little bit of a shock to her.
Now, there are a few basic facts of life, a few basic truisms of life.
Don't send emails when you're enraged.
And also, any comedian who describes themselves as edgy, in-your-face comedians...
Are not that at all.
I'm edgy.
I push the envelope.
I challenge people's comfort zones.
No, you don't.
Kathy, you don't.
It's like half a step up from, boy, isn't airline food terrible?
You know, after she's saying she's a real edgy, in-your-face, boundary-pushing comedian, she makes fun of Donald Trump's hair, comparing it to a bird's nest.
She might have seen eggs in there.
Ooh!
Kathy!
That's too edgy for me.
Making fun of Donald Trump's hair.
Wow, that's Lenny Bruce passing a kidney stone kind of edgy.
Not.
Now, she does talk a lot, and this is again another one of these yodel siren calls for the left.
She wants to be a role model for girls, right?
She wants to be a role model for girls.
So they can go out and achieve great things and do wonderful things and so on.
Well, So if you're holding up a beheading photo, then, you know, that says you're, you know, ready to play in the big league, so to speak, of controversy, right?
You're tough, you're strong, you're holding up a beheading photo.
Now then, if you're asked some mildly tough questions in a press conference, you cry and say it's too painful to talk about and so on.
I don't really think that's a particularly great role model.
You know, if you come on really strong, holding up someone's severed head, and then when you're asked a few mildly difficult questions, you burst into tears I think you're kind of reinforcing this cry-bully stereotype, that you're all kinds of tough when you're surrounded by your leftist enablers, but when people who aren't on the left ask you a few mildly difficult questions and you burst into tears, can you picture Ryan Rand doing that?
You were mean to socialists.
Well, we all know that on the left, victimhood is licensed.
You know, James Bond, license to kill.
If you can portray yourself as a victim, then you are pretty much allowed to do anything, which is why the clamoring for victimhood is so strong on the left.
And if anyone's in any doubt about the politics, I guess, of this woman or some of her lawyers, the press conference just is spewing a whole bunch of Democrat talking points, you know.
Trump is cutting funding for NPR, cutting science, climate change.
So, it is a political maneuver, and politics can be rough.
Now, one thing, and I did a little bit of research on this, so tell me if I've gone astray.
Of course, you can let me know in the comments below.
But she, Kathy, seemed to, well, she openly said that her perception was that Trump is personally trying to destroy her.
He broke me!
Trump is personally trying to destroy her.
Now, I find that a little confusing.
Okay, so let me go into sort of why.
First of all, this Lisa Bloom, it's her attorney.
And there was much made of the power disparity.
He's the President of the United States.
I'm just a world-famous comedian worth $20 million.
He's the President of the United States.
And therefore, because of the power disparity, he has a greater responsibility to act in a better way.
Now, I am old enough to remember the reaction of a lot of mainstream feminists to Bill Clinton using his...
Intern.
Or interns, maybe.
It was certainly one intern, Monica Lewinsky, as a combination humidor, Geisha girl, and personal post-wank Kleenex.
And there, of course, was a huge power disparity.
Monica Lewinsky had far less power and independence and wealth than Kathy Griffin and a lot of the mainstream feminists, while Bill Clinton was...
Performing his sexual acts upon his unpaid intern didn't seem to have much of a problem with the power disparity there.
They didn't come out enraged because he was defending abortion, which is essential for the lefts, making sure that people act as irresponsibly and self-destructively as humanly possible.
So, the idea that Donald Trump is now plotting or planning or activating some hidden secret army to destroy Kathy Griffin, well, Griffin's attorney Lisa Bloom said that Trump and his family were using their power to target her.
And Kathy Griffin said, if you don't stand up, you get run over.
What's happening to me has never happened in this great country.
A sitting president of the U.S. is personally trying to ruin my life forever.
Her lawyer said, as a result of the first family bullying her, she has been vilified getting death threats, fired from multiple jobs, and had multiple events cancelled.
So here you see the causality is that these bad things have happened to Kathy Griffin as the result of the first family bullying her.
I think a case could be made that some of these things resulted from Cathy holding up the severed head simulacrum of Donald Trump and publishing it on the internet.
It could be that that's the causality of why she got fired, not because of some bullying from Donald Trump and his family, because this is the amazing thing that happens on the left.
They say, I'm going to do something really offensive.
And you're not allowed to criticize me.
You're not allowed to act out in any way negatively towards me.
You're not allowed to say I shouldn't be hired here.
You're not allowed to call people up.
You're not allowed to boycott me.
So I have the right and the freedom to be truly offensive, which they do.
But you're not allowed to have the right to say anything negative against me.
Freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom of association.
It's my right to be offensive.
But...
If there are any negative consequences, voluntary and peaceful negative consequences, to me being offensive, well, that's just wrong in censorship.
So basically, I'm allowed to say if I'm on the left whatever I want, but you're not allowed to say stuff because that's bullying.
Now, TMZ has reported that Trump and Melania's son, 11-year-old Barron, was watching TV. The image of his father's pseudo-beheading came up.
Freaked him out.
He didn't know.
It was just a prank.
Ran screaming to his mom, according to this report.
And...
That seems something somewhat important.
Now, again, the point was made, and it's a fair point, that comedians shouldn't self-censor because some child might be upset.
If you let your kid watch the news, maybe he just will see his own father simulated beheading on television.
You know, it can happen to anyone.
It happens all the time.
Happens all the time.
You can't drive down the street, see a billboard, can't do anything.
Can't see ads on your web browser without seeing your own beheading or the beheading of someone you love.
Pretty much everyone, right?
Now, Melania Trump wrote, when you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.
Now, I think she's referring to the fact that, I don't know, beheading, cultural appropriation from ISIS, right?
I mean, there are people and Muslims and Christians and atheists and so on in ISIS-controlled territories who are having their heads sawn off.
And it could be argued that politically motivated, simulated beheadings are not...
Very tasteful, given the number of real beheadings that are occurring in the world that are, to a large degree, politically motivated.
Now, Donald Trump wrote out about this.
Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself.
My children, especially my 11-year-old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this.
Sick is bullying.
Bullying!
And this is the cry bully stuff.
This is what the left does.
This is what cowards do all the time.
Is they take a shot at you.
They do something horrific and offensive towards you.
And then if you answer back, you're just bullying.
See, holding up, severed head.
Well, it's just political comedy.
It's so funny, right?
On the other hand, saying that it's really hurtful and painful to your family.
Well, that's just plain bullying.
You see?
You see how this works?
If you speak back, you're the bully.
The woman holding up the severed head.
Well, she's just a free spirit.
She's just an edgy comedian.
But if you say that's hurtful and upsetting, well, you're just a bully, you see, and you're just wildly inappropriate and you're just abusing your power.
Now, they did bring up in the press conference that some other artists, Marilyn Manson, some other people, had done aggressive acts towards Trump substitutes in their music and video.
And that's a fair point.
And they're just called bad boys.
Here's the thing, though.
Here's the thing.
When you're friends with Al Franken, right?
That was going to be a tour, I think, of some kind this summer.
I think Al Franken has pulled out of that.
When you are helping raise money for the Democrats, when you're a specifically political person, and when you're kind of mainstream, that has a different kind of sensibility than, I mean, Marilyn Manson, for heaven's sake.
Marilyn Manson, I mean...
Just look at the guy.
I mean, he's like a wounded beluga with eyeliner.
And of course he's going to be doing crazy stuff.
That's kind of understood.
He's not hosting CNN 10 years in a row.
He's not mainstream.
He's not central.
To certain political narratives on the left.
So, now, Ted Nugent said some pretty horrible and distasteful things about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
And, yes, he was investigated by the Secret Service.
So, you know what he didn't do?
Interestingly enough, he didn't call a press conference and cry when that happened.
He said his rough piece, he said his rough trade, nasty stuff.
He was investigated and...
I don't remember any particular tears coming down from his face.
Now, some of the statements seemed a little so contradictory as well in this press conference.
She says, Now more than ever, we must absolutely go for all the absurdities, referring to comedians' relationships with Donald Trump.
She said, for me, that's Trump and all things Trump.
It's not about trying to be an equal opportunity offender anymore because Hillary got such a beatdown.
It's his turn.
So I'm happy to deliver beatdown to Donald Trump and also to Barron.
You know, a lot of people are going to go hard for Donald.
My edge is that I'll go direct for Baron.
I'm going to get in ahead of the game.
So that's where she's coming from.
This is not a joke.
She's directly talking about using her very public platform to target an 11-year-old boy, to attack and humiliate and mock him.
Now, as far as power disparities go, a very famous $20 million public comedian with a huge public platform versus an 11-year-old boy.
And you're going to cry, power disparities?
It's so boring, it's so predictable, it's so yawn-inducing, and yet still needs to be discussed every single time it comes up.
So, what does this all mean?
Well, first of all, it did not take more than a day for Kathy Griffin to go from what seemed like a somewhat sincere, though I didn't believe it, but fairly abject apology for doing the wrong thing, for being in the wrong...
To coming out in a press conference and spewing the usual Democrat talking points about what a jerk and a mean person and a terrible person Donald Trump is.
So yes, I was totally wrong for holding his severed head up in a photo, but he is a real jerk.
Remember, he's a real jerk.
He's cutting funding for NPR and stuff, and it's like, oh man, dudes, I don't even know what to say.
Like, okay, time to criticize.
Not right after you've abjectly apologized for holding up The guy's severed head in a photo.
That is not the time to attack the guy repeatedly afterwards, right?
Like the thing he said about Megyn Kelly, she was really angry, there was blood coming out of her nose, blood coming out of her wherever.
Which apparently has become some menstrual thing in the minds of some, I guess, people I don't really agree with.
That is not equivalent.
So him making some statement that it seemed like there was blood coming out of her eyes, she was so angry, to he is a severed, bleeding head.
These are not equivalencies, you understand?
they don't fit together they don't hang on the same scale and produce balance here this is not the right time to be criticizing someone like if you want to apologize to someone for something you did don't immediately turn it into a fundamental criticism about his personality character policies and all this kind of stuff oh bad idea now regarding free speech i'm a huge fan There should be almost no limits to what people say and are allowed to say and so on.
Because we need to map where people are.
We need to map where people are.
What do they think?
What are they actually talking about?
We don't want a chilling effect.
We don't want people to feel that they can't talk about certain topics for fear of negative consequences because then we genuinely don't know what people are thinking.
And also, we want people who are crazy, who are wrong, who are immoral, To come forward and make their case.
And that way, bing, we can see exactly what's going on.
You map with the radar of free speech where people are in society.
So I'm a big fan of that.
Whether this is free speech or not, well, there's an active criminal investigation into this, so I guess, legally at least, we'll find out over time.
But I'm not a big fan of violent threats.
Obviously, you know, Kathy Griffin, in the video, oh, she's getting death threats, and that's terrible, and people should not be sending death threats, right?
So, if somebody emailed a picture, say, of someone holding up Kathy Griffin's severed head, I guess I just have one question.
Somebody emails to Kathy Griffin a picture of someone holding up Kathy Griffin's severed, bleeding head.
