Dana Perino tramples on Kathy Griffin's phony apology for decapitated Trump photo

Conservative commentator Dana Perino angrily denounced Kathy Griffin's apology after the furor over her photo showing President Donald Trump's decapitated head. She explained Tuesday why she thought the apology was phony on Fox News' "The Five."

"It felt contrived," she interjected after Greg Gutfeld showed the video of Griffin apologizing.

"You think so?" Gutfeld asked.

"Yeah!" Perino responded. "In the monologue, you showed the video behind scenes where she's talking to the photographer. She's saying, 'Call your dad, tell him that we're not gonna survive this.' So the whole thing is manufactured."

"Free speech does not mean that it's free of consequences," Perino continued. "And she said, 'I'm gonna stand by my art.' Well she's not, she's a total wimp! What she actually wanted was to get this picture on there, to have the shock value, to create the firestorm and then be able to do the apology so that she could get a ton of attention.

"I don't believe her at all!" Perino concluded. "And I'm actually a pretty nice person! And I actually ... I think she's lying!"

"It also doesn't help the left," Perino said later in the segment, "like if she thinks she's actually helping advance the left's cause, like they have better ideas than President Trump and the Republicans, this actually just sets them back."

"Especially when it comes to the fact that we are dealing with an enemy that uses beheadings to try to advance an ideological agenda," she continued. "And think about somebody like James Foley or Daniel Pearl, these were victims of this war of the most vicious ways — to get attention to advance an ideological agenda that is against free speech. And then she tries to claim free speech as her reason."

Griffin was almost universally excoriated for the depiction of Trump's decapitated head as she held it aloft in a controversial photo. But there were a few holdouts, like journalist Molly Ball who said she just couldn't bring herself to care because the Trumps were using each occasion to paint themselves as victims.

Griffin later apologized, but as Perino's comments show, not everyone is convinced she was genuinely contrite about her actions.