President Donald Trump took a shot at recent émigré Rosie O’Donnell while meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin on Wednesday.
For the unaware, the former talk show host revealed that she has decamped the United States for Ireland in a nearly 10-minute video shared to TikTok on Tuesday. Trump, who has feuded with O’Donnell for decades, saw an opportunity for a put-down when the veteran comic’s name came up during Wednesday’s meeting.
“Do you know who she is?” Trump asked Martin, getting a shrug in return. “You’re better off not knowing.”
O’Donnell shared earlier this week that she moved to the Emerald Isle shortly before Trump’s inauguration, saying it was “best for myself and my 12-year-old child.”
“I was never someone who thought I would move to another country,” O’Donnell said before hinting at the political winds that have blown her across the Atlantic. “It has been heartbreaking to see what is happening over there politically and hard for me personally as well.”
O’Donnell, who came out as gay in 2002, pointed toward the Trump administration’s attacks on LGBTQ people while explaining her move. She said that she might return once she feels it is “safe” in the U.S.
“When you know it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back,” she said.
O’Donnell and Trump have squabbled publicly and repeatedly since her first stint as a co-host on ABC’s “The View.” In 2006, O’Donnell called the president a “snake-oil salesman” while discussing a scandal around Trump’s Miss USA pageant. Trump has celebrated every cancellation of O’Donnell-hosted programs ever since.
“Rosie O’Donnell has failed again,” he wrote on social media when O’Donnell’s series on OWN was ended in 2012. “Her ratings were abysmal and Oprah cancelled her on Friday night. When will media executives learn that Rosie just hasn’t got it?”
O’Donnell said that her time in Ireland has been “pretty wonderful” and urged her fellow Americans to do what they can to push back against Trump’s actions in his second term.
“I encourage everyone to stand up, to use their voice, to protest, to demand that we follow the constitution in our country, and not a king and not a man and we don’t have cruelty as part of our governing style,” she said. ‘Protect your sanity as much as you can, and try not to swim in the chaos, if possible. But I know it’s nearly impossible when you’re there in the middle of it.”
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