Late Tuesday morning, leaked images of washed up comedian and CNN News Year’s Eve co-host Kathy Griffin holding a bloody mockup of President Trump’s head aloft went viral. It took CNN hours before any host on the channel dared to bring her up. Following a warning for graphic content, Jake Tapper, host of The Lead, displayed an image. The members of Tapper’s panel were unfazed by the display, with Molly Ball of The Atlantic claiming that the Trump family’s outrage was just them playing the victim card.
“I want to warn you out there, especially if you have kids, you might find what we're about to show you a little bit graphic. It’s not an actual photograph but let me show you right now,” Tapper warned the audience. “It’s a depiction of comedian Kathy Griffin who does work for CNN on New Year’s Eve. She’s pictured in this new photo shoot holding a bloody Donald Trump head.”
Tapper added that “It's pretty disgusting, and I can't imagine how anybody would think that's appropriate. Donald Trump Jr. is out there saying this is now considered to be acceptable discourse by the left.”
But Molly Ball didn’t have a problem with it and argued the Trump family was just trying to play themselves up as victims. “Who is saying it's even discourse? I have a hard time bringing myself to care about something like this. I think it just speaks to the need to see themselves as a victim that they have, that they are constantly being persecuted,” she told Tapper. “The Trump people are constantly having to point to the elites who are looking down on them,”
“Of course, comedians and celebrities say dumb stuff and do dumb stuff and violence is not appropriate, but I just don't think that that's the source of President Trump's problems,” she said, trying to brush off the incident as nothing. Ball’s fellow panelists, Obama administration lackey Jen Psaki and former Trump campaign strategist David Urban dismissed it as unimportant as well.
To make Ball’s position even more ridiculous, radical leftist Keith Olbermann actually denounced Griffin’s stunt on Twitter between calls for Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner to be arrested. “Nope. Too much. By a very long distance, way too much,” he said in a reply to Griffin’s own tweet.
So far, there has been no official comment from CNN about Griffin’s disgusting photo shoot or her future with the news organization.
Transcript below:
CNN
The Lead
May 30, 2017
4:35:26 PM EasternJAKE TAPPER: I want to turn to another issue kind of in the pop culture sphere, and I want to warn you out there, especially if you have kids, you might find what we're about to show you a little bit graphic. It’s not an actual photograph but let me show you right now. It’s a depiction of comedian Kathy Griffin who does work for CNN on New Year’s Eve. She’s pictured in this new photoshoot holding a bloody Donald Trump head.
It's pretty disgusting, and I can't imagine how anybody would think that's appropriate. Donald Trump Jr. is out there saying this is now considered to be acceptable discourse by the left, Molly.
MOLLY BALL: I—Who is saying it’s acceptable discourse exactly?
TAPPER: Don Trump Jr.
BALL: Who is saying it's even discourse? I have a hard time bringing myself to care about something like this. I think it just speaks to the need to see themselves as a victim that they have, that they are constantly being persecuted. It’s constantly—
TAPPER: The Trump’s you’re talking about.
BALL: The Trump people are constantly having to point to the elites who are looking down on them. Of course, comedians and celebrities say dumb stuff and do dumb stuff and violence is not appropriate, but I just don't think that that's the source of President Trump's problems.
…
