Kathy Griffin has claimed that former President Donald Trump smelled "really bad" when she appeared on his reality show The Apprentice over a decade ago.
Several years before becoming a political heavyweight, real estate mogul Trump co-produced and hosted the NBC reality show, which saw him judging the business acumen of dozens of contestants between 2004 and 2015.
While Griffin was never a contestant on the show, she did make two appearances in the series, including on a season finale alongside Liza Minnelli back in 2010. At the time, Griffin and Trump had been familiar with one another for several years.
As has been well documented in the years since, comedian Griffin has been an outspoken critic of Trump, notably facing relentless backlash when she posed with the severed head of an effigy of the then-president in 2017.
On Thursday, one of Griffin's Twitter followers informed the Suddenly Susan star that they had tuned in to watch her on The Apprentice, but struggled to get through the episode due to their apparent objection to Trump's presence.
TV personality Griffin responded from her locked account on the social media platform by taking a swipe at Trump's purported odor.
"Oh, God, I was never contestant," she wrote in a tweet viewed by Newsweek. "However, I did participate in two challenges. One I did because of my dear departed, beloved Joan Rivers. The other one I did because Trump paid me a bunch of money to spend the day with Liza Minnelli and host a challenge. Liza and I tried to ignore him, but he does smell really bad."
Newsweek has reached out to a representative of Trump via email for comment.
In November 2021, Griffin said that Trump brought the persona he displayed on The Apprentice into the White House following his successful 2016 campaign.
"I saw him as an over-the-top, fame-hungry, harmless blowhard," she told The Wrap. "The premise of The Apprentice is antithetical to what actually makes a good business. Trump advised the contestants to be as divisive among themselves as possible. That's not how you run an administration. I'm not a historian. I'm not Michael Beschloss—but I know that!"
She also told NPR back in April 2019 that Trump "hired me to roast him on an episode of The Apprentice," calling the former president "a joke" and "super nonsensical" based on the conversations she'd had with him over the years.
Griffin has been a vocal critic of Trump for a number of years. She has said previously that her decision to pose with a severed head, styled to resemble the former president, damaged her career.
Trump himself was a prominent voice in the backlash against Griffin, writing on Twitter back in 2017: "Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11-year-old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick."
The gory image, which was taken by celebrity photographer Tyler Shields, sparked a widespread outcry, leading to comedian Griffin issuing a public apology.
"I sincerely apologize," she said in a video posted to social media in May 2017. "I am just now seeing the reaction of these images... I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people. It wasn't funny. I get it."
She later retracted her apology, saying during an appearance on ABC's The View in 2018: "I take the apology back. F*** him... I'm not holding back on this family. This family is different. I've been through the mill."
Griffin went on to explain her reasons for taking back her apology, as she said: "The First Amendment is important. It's the first for a reason."
"People thought I was ISIS," she continued. "When my mother called—she watches Fox News and thinks it's real and thinks Bill O'Reilly is on vacation—that day, as crazy as it was, I was in a ball, sobbing, everything's over... I had to spend two hours convincing my mom I hadn't been recruited by Al-Qaeda."
"My mom got death threats in her retirement village, and my sister got death threats in her hospital bed, and I lost her to cancer—that's why I shaved my head," Griffin added. "That's how vicious it can be."
More recently, Griffin has stood in public support of E. Jean Carroll, amid her ongoing court battle with Trump in New York City. Carroll, a former Elle columnist, is suing Trump for defamation over comments he made in which he denied allegations that he raped her in a dressing room in New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
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