Donald Trump has been obsessed with noted lesbian icon Rosie O’Donnell for nearly two decades, and regardless of his specific occupation at any given point time, he finds a way to work Rosie O’Donnell into the conversation. During his Apprentice days, he wanted to tell her “you’re fired.” Now, as president, he wants to kick her out of the country. There is nothing that can stop Donald Trump from coming up with reasons to talk about Rosie O’Donnell!!
This past week, seemingly in response to her post mourning the deaths of flood victims in Texas and criticizing his decision to gut environmental agencies that forecast national disasters, he has escalated his attacks to… threaten revoking her citizenship? This is not something Trump is actually legally able to do, although he sure has been doing things I didn’t think were legally possible for months now.
Amid a tidal wave of MAGA backlash over not following through on promises related to the Jeffery Epstein case, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social:
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
In response, O’Donnell wrote, in an instagram caption beneath a picture of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, a really marvelous little poem that I would like stitched into a pillow:
O’Donnell, whose father’s family is Irish, moved to Ireland before inaguration. “I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN. “I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms.”
Trump also took a shot at O’Donnell earlier this year when Taoiseach Micheál Martin traveled to the white house for a meeting about tariffs which went entirely off the rails. Once more, Trump found a way to work Rosie into the conversation, inspiring the Fox Five to speculate that she moved to Ireland from the US because “nobody likes her” and “because of the potatoes.”
Sunday morning in fair Ireland, Rosie appeared on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday with Miriam, sharing that when she was first shown Trump’s post on Truth Social, she didn’t think it was real: “It had a red check instead of a blue check so I thought it was a fake account. I said, ‘oh that’s kind of funny, but it’s fake,'” but after being told it was, in fact, a real thing the President of the United States wrote on his social media account, she published her response.
Fox News pundits have echoed Trump’s position, acknowledging he can’t actually revoke her citizenship while also celebrating the hypothetical possibility of losing O’Donnell to Ireland permanently, celebrated by Fox News as a way to make the USA “healthier, better looking and less insane.”
Rosie told RTE: “I am very proud to be opposed to every single thing he says and does and represents.”
What Is Donald Trump’s History With Rosie O’Donnell?
In 2006, Rosie O’Donnell made fun of Donald Trump on The View. She called him a “snake oil salesman” and “not a self-made man.”
Ripping on Donald Trump was a common pastime in the New York City press, but he lost his mind after Rosie’s comments. He threatened to sue and take “lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie.” He told Entertainment Tonight that she “talks like a truck driver,” has a “fat ugly face” and furthermore “is a very unattractive person inside and out.” That message also included a threat to send his friends over to “save” her then-girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter, asking, “why would [Kelli] stay with Rosie if she had another choice?”
Especially in 2006, that kind of rhetoric was hardly unpopular. Trump’s criticisms caught fire because O’Donnell embodied a female masculinity and dykey attitude long derided in American culture. She didn’t fit into Trump’s ideas of how women should look or behave, and no amount of wealth or fame compensated for her existence at the intersection of so many identities seen as disposable at the time.
The entire country seemed to turn on her in the early aughts when she came out and got a gay haircut, but despite living through that special moment in time, O’Donnell told People Magazine in 2014 that the feud with Trump was “the most bullying I ever experienced in my life, including as a child. It was national, and it was sanctioned societally. Whether I deserved it is up to your own interpretation.”
I wrote about Rosie’s history with Trump in 2015, when he dragged her into the discourse again during a presidential debate with this winning exchange:
Megyn Kelly: “You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals’—”
Donald Trump (interrupting): “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
(Wild laughter and applause from the audience.)
– The GOP Presidential Debate, 9:15 PM, August 6th, 2015
15 minutes later, O’Donnell tweeted, “try explaining that 2 ur kids.” When Trump was elected, she told W Magazine that she went into shock “to think that the man who had abused me so viciously and with impunity for over a decade was now running the country.”
Why Rosie Thinks Donald Trump Is Obsessed With Her
When asked on Sunday why she thinks Trump is so obsessed with her, O’Donnell floated a theory: “I think it’s because we grew up in the same area… I think I remind him of all the kids at school who never liked him. I’m a tough New York tomboy girl — and I think his crap never flew with me or New Yorkers.”
Over the past few years, Rosie’s presence on TikTok has earned her a new generation of fans and followers and re-engaged those of us who’ve been following her since the ’90s and through her blogging era. She’s in a unique financial position that enables her to do things like leave the country to protect her kid, and take strong political stances without worrying about the impact on her career.
It’s been inspiring to see, finally, people standing up for her, to see the slew of “Rosie was right” clips on my feed. Even Ellen DeGeneres chimed in to applaud Rosie, which was surprising on several levels to the entire community.
In that 2017 W Magazine story I mentioned earlier, she pointed out what I did in 2015 — that she never had much support back then. “For reasons I can’t really still figure out, he was allowed with impunity to brutally assault me and my character for a decade. No one—not the National Organization For Women, not Gloria Steinem, no one—stood up and said, “What the hell are you doing?” It was laughed about.”
O’Donnell has often written and spoken about her intense emotional reaction to the news and current events, this unstoppable empathy and desire to fix the world. Now, at a time when so few seem willing to speak up against Trump — when corporations and doctors and schools and government agencies are just falling in line with his increasingly fascist policies —we do still have Rosie O’Donnell! I don’t always agree with her, but more often than not, we’re all kinda obsessed with her, too.
I must have missed this in the endless madness but he brought Rosie O’Donnell up to the Taoiseach??? The actual Taoiseach?? I am staring directly into the camera. Rosie O’Donnell 4evA
i KNOW it is COMPLETELY bananas!!!
As a lifelong Rosie Stan, be assured that she’s very welcome in Ireland. Her views about the megalomaniac dictator are shared by many of us on this side of the ocean.