Rosie O’Donnell fled the U.S. to escape Donald Trump’s presidency. But she is not impressed with her fellow comedian and former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres’ decision to do the same.
In a new interview with Us Weekly Wednesday, O’Donnell said she was “surprised” to read that DeGeneres decamped to Great Britain with her wife Portia de Rossi after Trump won a second term.
“I’ve never really known Ellen to say anything political in her life, so I was surprised to read that she left because of President Trump,” she told the magazine. “Like, that shocked me, actually.”
While DeGeneres hasn’t publicly confirmed that she and de Rossi left the States on account of Trump’s win, sources “close” to her told The Wrap she wanted to “get the hell out” after the election results. DeGeneres publicly supported Kamala Harris on her social media accounts, but O’Donnell found her coyness about the move uninspiring.
The two former talk show hosts have an “awkward” history, which O’Donnell acknowledged Wednesday. “I don’t want to fight against another gay woman,” she said. “It’s not like we’re tenaciously opposed to each other. We’re just very different people. We have had some stuff in the past that we never resolved.”
O’Donnell told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that what was once a “good relationship” between the two media personalities soured when DeGeneres publicly claimed they “weren’t friends” during a “downward media time for me.”
O’Donnell’s Emmy-winning daytime talk series The Rosie O’Donnell Show aired from 1996 to 2002. During that time she earned the moniker “Queen of Nice” for her approachable on-air personality during that time. DeGeneres took up that torch with her “be kind to one another” mantra when her show premiered just one year later in 2003.
“It became a strange, ‘There can’t be two lesbians in this town,’ kind of a thing,” O’Donnell explained in the THR interview. “Then we each had success and went our separate ways.” What’s more, she said, “She used the same staff from my show… So that was odd. It was very similar to my show.”
“Then I asked to go on because of something I was promoting, and she said no. And I remember going, ‘Seriously?’ After she said no that one time, whenever they would ask me on the show, I would say no,” O’Donnell revealed, explaining why she never appeared as a guest.
DeGeneres made one appearance as a guest on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 1996.
Of course, DeGeneres’ retooled “be kind” brand backfired in spectacular fashion when her show’s staff accused her of cultivating a toxic workplace. The scandal ushered in the end of Ellen in 2022.
O’Donnell told Us, “We’re not really in each other’s worlds, and it’s been kind of awkward” between them.
She reflected on that awkwardness to THR, saying, “I don’t know if it’s jealousy, competition or the fact that she said a mean thing about me once that really hurt my feelings. But, “It would never occur to me to say ‘I don’t know her’ about somebody whose babies I held when they were born.”
“I have a picture of her holding [my then-infant son] Parker,” O’Donnell continued then. “I know her mother. I could identify her brother without her in the room. I knew her for so many years. It just felt like I don’t trust this person to be in my world.”
Though she told the site that DeGeneres apologized for the comment, it seems things haven’t changed much between them, as she blasted her ex-friend for leaving America for political reasons.
“I’ve been a political person my whole life, not better or worse, it’s just a different way to be in the world,” she explained. “I was very clear about the reason why I was leaving, and I don’t think it came as a surprise to anyone.”
Despite being an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights, DeGeneres has mostly avoided talking openly about her personal politics throughout her career, in sharp contrast to O’Donnell, who’s since become a prominent target of Trump‘s—so much so that she fled to Ireland following his second election win.
She told CNN Tuesday, “Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision.” O’Donnell always been crystal clear about why she made that choice, which she doubled down on during her appearance: “I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country.”
DeGeneres, on the other hand, dodged questions about her political alignments in 2019 when she was seen on camera laughing it up with George W. Bush at a Cowboys game—one of the only times she’d inadvertently made a political headline. “Just because I don’t agree with someone on everything doesn’t mean I’m not going to be friends with them,” she said at the time while (sort of) addressing the backlash to the clip on her show.
“I wish her the best. I seriously do,” O’Donnell said Wednesday, since “gay comedians” need to “stick together.”
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