Kathy Griffin rallies to Kimmel's defense as Trump presses ABC to fire host

Comedian Kathy Griffin came to the defense of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel this week, drawing on her own turbulent experience with presidential scrutiny after Mr. Kimmel’s joke about first lady Melania Trump ignited a firestorm that has since drawn in federal regulators. Ms. Griffin addressed the controversy Tuesday on her Talk Your Head Off podcast, expressing solidarity with Mr. Kimmel while lamenting that no one had mounted a similar defense when her career collapsed in 2017 following a photograph in which she posed with a prop resembling a bloodied, severed head of President Trump. “I’m just gonna be honest: It still hurts. It was nine years ago for me … It still hurts that nobody did stuff like this for me where they would dedicate a whole episode to just standing up for the First Amendment,” Ms. Griffin said, according to Breitbart. “Because my First Amendment rights were truly violated because I had the actual Department of Justice coming after me, not a private company, so that’s what’s happening to Jimmy right now.” Ms. Griffin also noted that Mr. Kimmel made his now-controversial quip two days before a gunman attempted to crash the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25.