Rosie O’Donnell could never have imagined that decades after her initial conflict with business tycoon Donald Trump, that he would be the President of the United States and threaten to revoke her US Citizenship.
“If you grew up in New York, you knew he was a con man and a freaky guy with weird hair and strange looking family and wife,” the entertainer tells Róisín Ingle on a live episode of The Women’s Podcast recorded at The Electric Picnic.
“He always wanted to come on my show and I never would do it,” the former talkshow host adds.
Eventually she hosted him on a charity segment titled Sweep the Floor where a broom company would donate $1000 for every famous person who swept the floor as part of the show but she says “I’ve never had a conversation with the man”.
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In spite of never having spoken to Trump, she was invited to his second wedding in 2005 to Marla Maples.
The now legendary spat erupted when the 2006 winner of the then Trump sponsored beauty pageant Miss USA was embroiled in a scandal after a wild night of partying in New York.
“He made her do a public apology on TV during a press conference to say that she was sorry for shaming the Trump name, and I said this looks like a pimp and his prostitute. That’s what it looked like to me”.
“I simply announced some facts about him that were not lies. They were facts that were easily accessible by anybody with a modem.” she says.
“He went batshit crazy,” she says of the incident.
“He went on every single talkshow in the United States, The Today show, The Tonight Show, the tomorrow show, the Isn’t Rosie a Fat Lesbian.com? Show”.
“He just wouldn’t stop,” explains O’Donnell.
Speaking on the Trump presidency the comedian says “This is a con man, a criminal, a creep who has almost just succeeded in destroying a very vibrant democracy”.
Trump’s reelection as President in 2024 was the reason behind O’Donnell’s decision to relocate to Ireland.
“I got on the plane on the 15th of January and I haven’t looked back. It’s been an amazing experience and I felt very taken care of and understood and appreciated in this country”.
O’Donnell also touches on the events in Gaza, saying that “After October 7th anyone who spoke up against what was happening to the civilians in Gaza was called anti-Semitic and that happened to me as well”.
Describing it as a “genocide” and Israel as “an apartheid state” the actor said that stating these “facts” were what got “Kneecap in trouble”.
The chatshow host also discusses feeling “ashamed” of her body for 40 years.
“I had succeeded in other areas. But why wasn’t I able to do this [lose weight]?”
The actor who uses Mounjaro to treat insulin resistance said: “When I started taking this medication, all of a sudden I went, ‘Oh my God, this is how a normal, non-obese person feels’. Where you can look at a bag of cookies and not take one”.
In this wide-ranging conversation O’Donnell also discusses turning down drinks with Prince, how she’s stayed friends with Madonna for 30 years, being an ardent feminist, and losing her mother at an early age.
The podcast was hosted as part of Jan Brierton’s Wild Words event.
In association with Kildare Village.
