Kathy Griffin is discovering one of the internet’s cruelest rules: the receipts never disappear.
The comedian, who has spent years positioning herself as one of Donald Trump’s loudest celebrity critics, found herself addressing a decades-old photo this week showing her sitting beside the future president and looking, well, perfectly happy about it.
According to Griffin, the image making the rounds online is the real deal — not some AI-generated fabrication cooked up by mischievous social media users. In a video posted to her YouTube channel, she acknowledged that the photograph was authentic and dated back roughly two decades, long before Trump became the central obsession of America’s political and cultural wars.
“I know, can you f—ing believe it?” Griffin said while discussing the image. “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.”
That admission may not come as a shock to anyone who remembers the celebrity culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Long before Trump entered politics, he was a fixture on Manhattan’s party circuit, reality television, charity galas and entertainment events. Plenty of comedians, actors, television personalities and socialites eagerly posed with him, attended his events and welcomed him onto their shows.
Griffin herself seemed nostalgic about at least one of the old snapshots, which also included personal finance personality Suze Orman.
“It captures the 2000s so much, where I would just run into Donald quite often at events, and he was ever-present,” Griffin said.
But Griffin’s real frustration appears to be with conservatives and Trump supporters who continue circulating those photos to challenge her anti-Trump credentials. The comedian argued that critics use the images as evidence that her current hostility toward Trump is insincere. “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,” she said.
That infamous image remains the defining moment of Griffin’s public career for many Americans.
In 2017, she ignited a firestorm after posing with what appeared to be a bloodied, severed head resembling Trump. The photograph triggered outrage across the political spectrum, drew condemnation from Democrats and Republicans alike, and prompted scrutiny from federal authorities. The backlash cost Griffin professional opportunities and turned her into a symbol of the increasingly toxic political culture consuming entertainment and media.
What makes the latest controversy especially striking is that Griffin has largely stopped expressing regret over the stunt. While she initially apologized after the uproar, she later reversed course and has repeatedly defended the image in subsequent interviews.
“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 in a recent interview.
“And so, when I look at that picture now, I’m very proud of it,” she continued.
