Morning panel talk show The View has never shied away from feuds, but most are forgotten almost as quickly as they’re ignited. That is, unless you’re Rosie O’Donnell, a co-host on the show from 2006-2007. In her case, a couple passing remarks she made about now-President Donald Trump led to two decades of rage from the now-president, anger that spilled over Saturday when Trump announced he was “giving serious consideration to taking away her (sic) Citizenship.”
Author Ramin Setoodeh wrote in 2019 that O’Donnell got the ick from Trump in the early 1990s, saying her distaste began after she attended his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. “He’s the most absurdly transparent con man,” she told Setoodeh. “I’m friendly with Marla, which is how I was at his wedding. I know the shit that he did.”
O’Donnell brought some of that shit up on December 20, 2006, when she gave her opinion about a kerfuffle at the Miss U.S.A. pageant, which Trump owned. “Listen, this guy annoys me on a multitude of levels,” Rosie O’Donnell said of the reality star. “He’s the moral authority? Left the first wife, had an affair. Left the second wife, had an affair. Had kids both times.”
“He inherited a lot of money, and he’s been bankrupt so many times, where he didn’t have to pay,” O’Donnell continued. “Do you know what saved him the second time? After his father died, with that money, he paid off his bankruptcy.”
By the time that day’s live broadcast of The View had concluded, producer Bill Geddie’s phone was ringing. It was Trump. “I have never filed for bankruptcy,” Trump told him, and threatened to sue the show and network ABC; he followed up with a tour of more than 20 interview shows on which he referred to O’Donnell as “fat little Rosie,” “stupid,” “a little clam,” “unattractive,” “that animal,” and a “degenerate.”
And thus began a back-and-forth that’s continued for nearly 19 years, as the two traded barbs first over the airwaves, then on the emerging world of social media. Most recently, O’Donnell took to TikTok to announce that she’d moved from the U.S. to Ireland, as “It’s been heartbreaking to see what’s happening politically and hard for me personally as well. The personal is political, as we all know.”
It’s unclear what inspired Trump’s latest salvo in their war of words. Perhaps he opened HBO Max and saw his longtime enemy’s face in a promo for the current season of …And Just Like That, on which O’Donnell appeared as a nun who has her first sexual experience with Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). Or perhaps he happened on her recent appearance on Hacks, where she cameoed as herself. Or perhaps he hoped bringing up O’Donnell would distract from the rising MAGA-world rage he’s facing over the much-ballyhooed Jeffrey Epstein client list.
Regardless of motive, Trump’s Saturday post to Truth Social evoked more jeers than cheers. “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,” he wrote.
For her part, O’Donnell seems less than upset by the president’s threat. Via Instagram, she responded that (sic throughout) “the president of the usa has always hated the fact that i see him for who he is – a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself.”
“(H)e is a dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity- i stand in direct opposition all he represents- so do millions of others – u gonna deport all who stand against ur evil tendencies – ur a bad joke who cant form a coherent sentence.” In a subsequent post, a caption to a photo of Trump with Epstein, O’Donnell wrote (sic throughout) “hey donald – you’re rattled again? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. you call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman a queer woman a mother who tells the truth.”
In her conclusion, she evoked both Game of Thrones and an innocent citrus fruit, saying “you want to revoke my citizenship? go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan.”
As O’Donnell was born in Commack, New York, Trump has a hard road ahead of him, should he take her up on her taunt. “It is difficult to denaturalize a U.S. citizen and even harder to expatriate one,” Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck says.
“Congress has provided for only a handful of circumstances in which the executive branch is empowered to pursue such a move; and the Supreme Court has recognized meaningful constitutional limits (and an entitlement to meaningful judicial review) even in those cases.”
In a statement sent to CBS News, University of Virginia School of Law professor Amanda Frost concurs. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, Frost writes that “The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen. In short, we are a nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
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