Jay Leno isn’t outraged by Kathy Griffin, who recently stirred controversy when she posed for a photo holding a mocked-up severed head resembling President Trump’s.

He just didn’t think it was funny, which is kind of the point for a comedian, right?

“If a joke is really funny, all bets are off,” Leno said before a Monday night performance at the Kennedy Center benefiting the David Lynch Foundation. “How many times have you heard someone go, ‘oh my God that was terrible, but it was so funny.’ ” But Griffin’s gag, he said, “misfired — it didn’t work. It was an ISIS pose … it brought up all the wrong images. The joke didn’t work, case closed.”

That said, he added, it’s not like she, or any other comedian, can’t cross lines.  “You can do it — nobody’s gonna get arrested, the feds aren’t coming in, it’s just people weighing in one way or another.”

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Comedian Margaret Cho, who also performed at the event — along with Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman and Kesha — weighed in, too. Griffin, who she called a good friend, will come out of the controversy fine, Cho predicted. (Though Griffin’s gag cost her the annual job co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast.) “This is great for Kathy,” she insisted. “Everybody in the world is talking about her.”

Besides, Cho said, sparking controversy is all in a day’s work in their line of work.

“A comedian’s job is to push buttons,” she said. “It’s to provoke and to outrage, and she does that better than anybody else.”

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