Kathy Griffin made her splashy debut as Counselor to the President of the United States Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday night’s The President Show special on Comedy Central, and one could argue that this is the role she was born to play. Not that Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne is anything to sniff at, but Griffin seems to possess a certain deranged je ne sais quoi that just can’t be matched.
As right-hand woman to Anthony Atamanuik’s Trump, dressed in her festively patriotic inauguration day garb, the character boasts that Kellyanne has no conscience, noting that “you can toss out the names of the worst people in history and she’ll happily defend them.” As an example, in the above clip, Atamanuik pitched Griffin disgraced former stockbroker Bernie Madoff, who stole literally billions of dollars from his clients.
Griffin’s Kellyanne was more than happy to oblige:
“Did Bernie Madoff’s investors go bankrupt? Yeah. But I find it interesting the media used the words ‘pyramid scheme.’ Frankly, that’s antisemitic when you cinsider the terrible suffering of the Jewish people in Egypt at the time of the pharaoh. So, this so-called bankruptcy is actually a moral one on your part, Wolf.”
Next, Griffin tackled serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who she defended with the argument that “everybody needs food to survive,” referring to him as a foodie and “salt of the earth, a flesh of the human kind of guy.”
Griffin is currently seeing an upswing in her career after she was met with controversy over a 2017 photo shoot in which she held up a fake bloody, decapitated Trump head that got her chastised from both sides of the political aisle and fired from CNN. She has since joked that she’d “do Mike Pence” instead, but it seems like this might be a bit safer outlet for her satire.
You can watch the full, hour-long special on Comedy Central’s website.
