Consider this the flip side of CNN’s strange decision to spend time and credibility just to get to the bottom of a CNN-critical Reddit meme. New York Magazine contributor Yasher Ali reported on Monday afternoon that the Secret Service spent more than an hour interviewing comedian Kathy Griffin over her Trump-decapitation tweet. Apparently, that didn’t entirely satisfy investigators, either:
News: Kathy Griffin has been interviewed by the Secret Service, in-person, for over an hour….investigation still not closed.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 3, 2017
Kathy Griffin was reportedly interviewed by Secret Service agents as part of the agency’s investigation into her infamous photo in which she’s holding a likeness of President Donald Trump’s bloody, severed head.
The interview took place Monday and lasted more than an hour, according to reporter Yashar Ali.
It’s tough to figure out where sympathies lie in this case. Should we sympathize for someone getting the full Secret Service treatment over a sick comedic stunt … or with Secret Service investigators who had to spend more than an hour with Kathy Griffin? Hmmmm. This might be a tough call.
The need for the Secret Service to touch all of the bases when determining whether threats to a protected figure — and especially the President — speaks for itself. The question here is whether anyone can take Griffin’s stunt seriously as either a threat or comedy. It’s been more than six weeks since Griffin’s deliberate photo stunt went public, which should be plenty of time to determine that Griffin’s not a physical threat to the president. Stretching this out unnecessarily looks more like a pour encourager les autres strategy rather than an in-depth probe into Griffin’s potential for actual violence. (Johnny Depp should pay particular attention to this.)
Perhaps, though, the Secret Service might be ready to wrap this up. A little over an hour seems like a short period of time to question someone being taken seriously as a security threat; it seems more like a box-checking exercise. We should encourage the Secret Service to close this up quickly and focus on serious threats. While the schadenfreude quotient for watching Griffin and Depp is admittedly off the charts, the Secret Service has more important tasks at hand.
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