Ellen DeGeneres throws support behind Rosie O’Donnell amid Trump attacks despite their 20-year feud
Ellen DeGeneres (left) has offered support to Rosie O’Donnell (right) amid Trump’s threats. (Getty Images)
Ellen DeGeneres (left) has offered support to Rosie O'Donnell (right) amid Trump's threats. (Getty Images)
Ellen DeGeneres has thrown her support behind fellow comedian Rosie O’Donnell amid President Donald Trump’s attacks, despite a 20-year feud between the comics.
Though former talk show Ellen Degeneres has been lying low in England following Trump’s win and her final comedy special, she has broken her silence to chime in on the discourse between the president and Rosie O’Donnell.
Trump threatened on Truth Social (12 July) to “take away [O’Donnell’s] citizenship” for supposedly “not [being] in the best interests of our Great Country”.
He continued: “She is a threat to Humanity and should remain the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The out lesbian comic, who previously shared that she moved to Ireland following Trump’s win, didn’t take the incumbent president’s threats lying down.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram: “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, an American who got out of the country [before] you set it ablaze,” she continued.
“You build walls – I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists. You crave loyalty – I teach my children to question power. You sell fear on golf courses – I make art about surviving trauma. You lie, you steal, you degrade – I nurture, I create, I persist.
“You are everything that is wrong with America – and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it. You want to revoke my citizenship? Go ahead and try, King Joffrey with a tangerine spray tan.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was,” she concluded.
DeGeneres has now firmly thrown her support behind O’Donnell in her own Instagram post (13 July).
Sharing the posts by both Trump and O’Donnell, DeGeneres wrote: “Good for you [Rosie]”, as the caption.
When did the feud between Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell start?
The feud between both comedians appeared to start in 2004, when DeGeneres remarked on Larry King Live that they are “not really friends” when asked why The Rosie O’Donnell Show was cancelled.
King then claimed that “the most controversial Rosie got, the less successful her show got”.
To this, DeGeneres replied: “I don’t really think I’m controversial. I think what I did was controversial,” DeGeneres said of her public coming out.
“Anytime you announce something about yourself, especially when it’s not socially accepted and people don’t understand it, that’s controversial. I’ve never been political. I’ve never really been outspoken. I’m a comedian who happens to be gay.”
Almost two decades later, O’Donnell reflected on a “weirdness in our relationship” with DeGeneres to The Hollywood Reporter, recalling when Time Magazine ran its 1997 “Yep, I’m Gay” cover with DeGeneres, “and everybody was asking me, ‘What do you think about Ellen?’ It became a strange, ‘There can’t be two lesbians in this town’ kind of thing”.
“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,” O’Donnell continued.
“She said it on Larry King Live. Larry King said, ‘Whatever happened to Rosie O’Donnell’s show? She went down the tubes as soon as she came out.’ And the quote that Ellen said was, ‘I don’t know Rosie. We’re not friends.’
“I was watching TV in bed with my wife, going, ‘Did she just say that?’ It would never occur to me to say ‘I don’t know her’ about somebody whose babies I held when they were born. It wouldn’t be in my lexicon of choices to ever say.
“When she was in a perplexing situation and people were saying things about her, I said, ‘Let me stand next to you and say that I’m Lebanese, too,’” she said, referring to a 1996 episode of her show when DeGeneres appeared and admitted that her character is “Lebanese” following speculation about her sexuality.
“When it was a downward media time for me, she didn’t do anything.”
O’Donnell is yet to comment publicly on DeGeneres’ supportive post.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
How did this story make you feel?
