One year ago, Kathy Griffin’s career was in chaos, after she tweeted a controversial video of herself holding a mask styled to look like Donald Trump’s bloody severed head. The veteran standup comic instantly became persona non grata in Hollywood, receiving countless death threats and losing lucrative marketing deals, tour bookings, and even her New Year’s Eve hosting job on CNN. (She tells Yahoo Entertainment that her falling-out with CNN co-host and friend Anderson Cooper “cut like a knife.”)

Griffin expressed regret at the time, but now, as she embarks on her snarkily titled “Laugh Your Head Off” comeback tour, she’s no longer apologizing. And she defiantly promises that her new comedy show will address the “big orange elephant” in the room.

Griffin recently sat down with Yahoo Entertainment to discuss getting support from Mark Hamill, Amy Schumer, and Rosie O’Donnell, giving support to Stormy Daniels, whether she’d ever run for office (Daniels/Griffin 2020, anyone?), and why she isn’t sorry anymore.

Yahoo Entertainment: First of all, the title “Laugh Your Head Off” is just brilliant. 

Kathy Griffin: I am so glad you get it. Because honestly, I started thinking about any way to be comedically productive when the government … including the moron in the Oval Office and his idiot grown children, Feckless Eddie Munster and Date Rape, when they came after me, and then the Department of Justice put me under a two-month federal investigation, never happened in the history of this country. You have to go from being emotionally a wreck to just somehow thinking — and this is just how I’m wired — “Can I put this through a comedic prism?” And so, yes, I thought, “You know what? This is a picture seen around the world. It actually is the same picture that allowed me to tour around the world for the first time. I have now leaned in, as they say, to the photo by naming the tour because… I don’t think anybody’s going to come to the show and not want to hear that story.

It’s the big orange elephant.

I mean, you’re being kind and that’s a horrible thing to say about elephants. But yes, he’s a big orange elephant.

I feel like you’re sort of the Dixie Chicks of comedy. They rebounded [after catching flak for criticizing George W. Bush] and won tons of Grammys, after sort of becoming persona non grata. Now the tides are turning for you too.

I love the comparison to the Dixie Chicks, but I was really Dixie-d***ed. Meaning, the Dixie Chicks had the left wing, and they put them on the cover of Time and Entertainment Weekly as sheroes. I mean, I had personal friends tweeting that I was ruining the resistance, that I was disgusting. And the Anderson [Cooper] thing, of course, cut like a knife. … A lot of people got scared, and I really saw the crowd mentality take over, even my personal relationships. And many of them have not recovered, and now I know why. You know, I really did learn who my friends are and are not.

Oh, by the way, I’m very open [to winning awards]. I want at least three pity awards. You know, whatever awards shows. Maybe I don’t really deserve it, but there’s some liberals on the deciding committee. I will take any pity award. I am not precious about that.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/kathy-griffin-lost-90-percent-195333684.html

I love seeing the attitude you have now. I’ll be honest with you: When you apologized at the time that the photo fallout happened, I was surprised at that time. It seemed, to me, out of character for you, because you were not a stranger to “offensive” humor, or humor that would offend some people, and I’d never seen you take it back before. What was going through your mind then, and obviously, how did you come to the place where now you’re not apologizing anymore?

So, a year ago the reason I apologized was… when I get a call from my good friend Rosie O’Donnell, who was very much there for me. She’s the preeminent expert on being trolled by Trump. I mean, he has not let up on her in 10 years. So when she called and she said, “Look, this thing has gone viral,” I was like, “Good!” And she’s like, “No, in a bad way.” And I’m going, “Oh, bro. I don’t care about that stuff.” And she’s saying, “No, no.” Meaning, what I know now and I didn’t know then was I had been entered into what I call the “Trump woodchipper.” The apparatus that was already in place, where they already knew Trump would personally call [Fox News host Sean] Hannity.

Everyone loved to call me “unhinged,” and TMZ was recording my tour cancellations in real time, which they have never done. And I said, “You know Donald Trump talks to Harvey Levin?” Harvey Levin is a self-loathing, gay, Republican man, so I don’t know what he thinks the Trump administration holds for him. It’s not unlike Caitlin [Jenner] going to Trump Tower thinking Trump was going to be for trans rights. … So, all those things put together was what I call the “woodchipper.” They were very effective at very quickly taking an offensive photo, to some, and then truly convincing millions of Americans that I, Kathy Griffin, from Suddenly Susan and My Life on the D-List and all my specials, had joined ISIS.

Besides Rosie here were some other people in Hollywood who supported you — at least eventually.

It’s taken time, and one thing I’m actually really touched by and gives me hope — I mean, it’s not like a little thing, but having Mark Hamill tweet, “Go see Kathy Griffin, she’s hilarious” with actual links to buy tickets. Or having Amy Schumer, once again, not just tweet like “give Kathy a break, she’s funny” but actually tweet like: “Here are her dates. Go buy tickets now.” And that’s something that’s relatively new, but it’s so refreshing.

Many of those folks, I didn’t want to reach out to and ask for help because I knew that I would be kind of putting them in danger a little bit. Amy Schumer for example, she sent me a video that very day that was so sweet, and Nikki Glaser was there. She was in a car with, I think, two other female comedians, and it’s the funniest tape. I actually should post it now; I hope she wouldn’t mind. But I didn’t want to post it for a whole year, because I thought, “Now Amy’s timeline and her social media is going to be flooded with the robots and the troll farms.” And also, I got many, many death threats in person, and people would come to my home, send me things to my home. You know, it wasn’t just the online stuff.

You were a very extreme case of cyberbullying, or bullying in general.

The other thing that’s a bummer is I do feel like with this Trump ideology, or whatever you want to call it, now everyone is suffering. I don’t think the “Be Best” campaign is working very well! So, the cyberbullying thing it was, like, for tweens, ‘member? It was for Demi Lovato fans. Now you have a president, although I call him an “accident,” who’s actually the worst of the bunch. And so, it’s enabled everyone to think Facebook is news, and now all of a sudden, your racist uncle posts something that then 10 of your cousins, who you thought you could trust, believe.

You mentioned losing friends over the controversy. Did you have falling-outs with family too?

Yeah, I’ve lost many, many relatives; I can’t convince them I’m not in ISIS. Sorry, I can’t say that without laughing! I’m from Oak Park, Illinois. … I don’t think I would do very well in ISIS. I think it’s too physically taxing. I also do not believe in their ideology, and I also, you know I’d be the “feckless c***” of ISIS. I would be the bitchy outspoken one where whoever the head, whoever was in charge of my squad, would be yelling at me all the time, and I’d probably break a hip during those exercises. You know, I’m not getting any younger.

So once again, to learn how to make jokes about ISIS; it’s a journey. But in a way, the administration has helped me, because they have done so many heinous acts, one after another — as well as being felons, some yet to be convicted, but they’re still committing felonies and they’re the same group who is trying to convince all the Trumpies to say, “Lock her up!” to me. So, you can hate that picture, but it’s very much covered under the First Amendment, and also, I’m having a lot of fun describing that story in my show while talking about how my neighbors during that entire trial were none other than Kim Kardashian West and Kanye Kardashian West. So, don’t worry, [my new show] is not like a long serious speech about the First Amendment. I’m still going give you the good ol’ Kathy Griffin razzle-dazzle and the celebrity run-ins and who was naughty and who was nice and the crazy things people said to me and who reached out and who didn’t.

And also, I still have run-ins to this day. I might go to an event and I’m very honored because this evening I’m going to get an award in West Hollywood, and it’s the same award that they gave to my friend Stormy Daniels. You heard me! I’m friends with Stormy Daniels. Yeah, I contributed to her legal defense fund. I don’t want to say “Stormy 2020” yet. But admit it: If Stormy Daniels could start Monday as president, you’d say, “Great.”

Would you ever run for office?

Never! Are you kidding?

Come on! Stormy/Kathy 2020!

The Griffin/Daniels ticket? I do like the Griffin/Daniels ticket. And by the way, I don’t really care — like, if [Stormy] wants to be president, I’ll be vice president. Women aren’t [competitive] like that. We just want to get stuff done. I also have my political platform — which I know would be a losing one: I would ask the men to literally step down for two entire years and let women run everything. And then we refold them back in. I don’t think I would probably win on that platform, but it’s a secret thought I harbor in my dark brain.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

In the past two weeks, two comediennes, from two very different political extremes, have been the focus of outrage that played out in real time on Twitter. First, Roseanne Barr’s eponymous ABC sitcom was abruptly canceled after she tweeted racist remarks about former President Barack Obama’s adviser Valerie Jarrett, and then right-wing protesters demanded that TBS cancel Full Frontal With Samantha Bee after Bee called Ivanka Trump, the current president’s daughter, a “feckless c***.” (Bee apologized, and her show remains on the air.)

Kathy Griffin knows what it’s like to be in the center of such an ugly social media storm: One year ago, after posting a video of herself holding a mask styled to look like Donald Trump’s bloody severed head, the veteran standup comic became persona non grata in Hollywood and received countless death threats online. But unsurprisingly, Griffin has only sympathy for one of the women mentioned in the above paragraph.

Griffin, who publicly begged for forgiveness after her “beheading” backlash last year but recently retracted her apology, actually tweeted Bee begging her not to apologize for the Ivanka insult. But, speaking to Yahoo Entertainment while promoting her cheekily titled “Laugh Your Head Off” comeback comedy tour, Griffin notes: “I also posted, ‘Don’t be hard on Sam Bee if she apologizes,’ because I don’t know if TBS made her. I’m suspecting that they did, and I’m, of course, very openly someone without a network or studio or any kind of support in that way. So, while I’ve been whining a lot about how I can’t get television work in my profession that made me able to tour the world, frankly, I think it’s great that TBS for the moment is standing by her. And I have a message for TBS: ‘If you don’t stand by her, I am coming for you.’”

Griffin, remembering how she lost lucrative marketing deals, tour bookings, and her New Year’s Eve hosting job on CNN after her controversy, has also rallied her more than 2 million Twitter followers to stand by Bee, urging: “Hey, let’s give a shout-out to the advertisers that don’t ditch Full Frontal. Because I will not let that happen to [Bee]. Because I will not let that happen to any other female comedian, or a female in any profession, that I hear about. Meaning, when it comes from the Oval Office… So, now I get it. Something isn’t going Trump’s way. Shiny object. Take down a woman. Bells and whistles. Everybody’s happy.”

Don’t forget to watch @fullfrontalsamb with @iamsambee tonight on TBS at 10:30/9:30 central! There’s no better combo – you get to watch the hilarious Samantha Bee and you’ll be pissing off Trump in the process! Trust me, she’s not feckless!

A post shared by Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) on Jun 6, 2018 at 5:21pm PDT

Just as Donald Trump and his family came after Griffin at the time of the “beheading” incident, the president also targeted Bee on Twitter — and that triggered Griffin. “The idea that we have a president that would tweet that, of course, a female comedian’s show should be canceled and she should be put out of work — I lived it. I know what that means. That doesn’t just mean he’s trying to put her out of work. That means all the crazy Trumpers are going after her and threatening to kill her. I know this.” She then adds more amusingly: “But I know that all the bots are activated, and so I laugh now, because half of my death threats were in broken English: ‘You be killing the ISIS lady with the red hair.’ OK, you’re not even a person. So, by the way, try to avoid arguments with trolls that are robots!”

Griffin believes that the online hate she and Bee received, from Trump and others, would not be nearly as vitriolic if they were male comedians. “It wouldn’t be an issue at all if it was a man. And if you’re talking about a 57-year-old woman,” she adds, pointing at herself, “then I’m going to throw the ageism at you with the misogyny, because this is a deeply misogynistic administration. Deeply ageist. And by the way, look at that old dinosaur himself. Who wants to f*** that guy? I mean, not even ‘Melanie’ [aka first lady Melania Trump]. ‘Melanie’ is hiding in a hospital somewhere. I don’t blame her. She should be in a psych ward just trying to recover from whatever the f*** he said to her at breakfast. If he ever sees her.

“So, yes, obviously I’m not holding back at all, but I can prove it,” Griffin breathlessly continues. “Because, as you know, Johnny Depp allegedly threatened the president. If you’ve ever met Johnny Depp, he’s not big on showers, but he enjoys the drink. Even I saw that tape and I was like, ‘That’s just Johnny Depp being maybe a little hammered.’ But the point is, he had the entire infrastructure of the Pirates of the Caribbean to make sure that he was photographed with a Make-a-Wish kid a week later. I know that game. The [Trump] administration didn’t go after Snoop because they don’t have the balls. And they famously invited Ted Nugent into the Oval Office, who threatened to shoot Barack Obama several times.”

It should be noted that Nugent also once called Hillary Clinton the above-mentioned C-word. Griffin has opinions on that slur as well. “Don’t talk to me about the C-word, especially if you’re a man,” she says, adding with a laugh: “Because, the funny thing is, ‘feckless’ is much more insulting. I mean, not that the Trumpers know what it means. They think it means ‘without feck.’ I am feck-full, just so you know. … I’ve been a scrappy feckless c*** my whole life. There, I just said it.”

As for the Roseanne fallout, Griffin seems to put Barr in the same category as Nugent. “All the agents skipped me. I can barely get one agent on the phone that I have left. No publicist will touch me; I’m so toxic,” Griffin begins, referring to the professional blacklisting that ensued after her fake-decapitation stunt. “But Roseanne, who’s a Nazi sympathizer, she gets an ABC high-budget show? So, [Bee and Barr] are very different stories, in that Roseanne is the real deal. She’s a true believer. She’s a Nazi. She has Nazi sympathies. She has Nazi leanings, and even after her first Twitter apology, before she got fired, she tweeted: ‘David Hogg, one of the Parkland survivors, is a Nazi.’ And then deleted it. She’s a lost cause. Meaning, maybe she’ll get a job on Infowars with Alex Jones and, if she wants to, perpetuate her theories that Hillary Clinton had a child sex ring in the bottom of a pizza parlor. Because that’s what she thinks. That’s very different than All in the Family, the idea that the Roseanne show was showing the ‘real America.’ No, you are showcasing one nut job.

“I actually hope they do bring the show back with the Conners. I get the reboot thing. I get the nostalgia,” Griffin continues. “But I’m glad that [Barr] showed her true colors, because I think it’s so essential for people to understand the delineation between an actress who’s playing a role that’s a very softened version of the Nazi sympathizer she has become. And I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true.”

Griffin will surely show her true colors and hold nothing back on her “Laugh Your Head Off” tour, which kicks off June 15 in San Francisco. Click here for dates and tickets.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.