Rosie O’Donnell launched a new fusillade at President Donald Trump from across the Atlantic, where the former talk show host recently fled to escape the administration.
“[It is] very strange that the president of the United States has so many friends who are sexual abusers,” O’Donnell said in an incendiary interview on Irish talk show The Late Late Show on Friday—the Emmy winner’s 63rd birthday.
The comment came in a discussion about Irish MMA star Conor McGregor, who met with Trump in the Oval Office this week.
O’Donnell also lamented the results of the 2024 election and took aim at Elon Musk, who owns Starlink, a satellite internet service provider.
“I question why, for the first time in American history, a president has won every swing state and is also best friends with, and his largest donor was, a man who owns and runs the internet,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell, who recently moved to Ireland to get away from Trump, said she had done so in part because her daughter, Clay, has autism.
“I have a child who has autism, and that child would be denied services—along with many, many other autistic children—because the funding for programs for special needs children comes from the federal government and from the states," she said on the show.
“It’s going to be disastrous for children on the spectrum, and that was terrifying,” she added.
O’Donnell garnered international media attention earlier this week when Brian Glenn—MAGA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend and a reporter for far-right Real America’s Voice—asked Trump about the comedian during a press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.
“Ireland is known for very happy, fun-loving people,” Glenn said. “Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland?”
“Thank you, I like that question,” Trump said before asking Martin if he knew of O’Donnell. Martin said he did not.
“You’re better off not knowing her,” Trump replied.
Trump’s remarks recalled his comments during the 2016 presidential election campaign, when Megyn Kelly, then at Fox News, asked Trump about calling women “fat pigs,” “dogs,” and “slobs.”
“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump joked.
O’Donnell said this week that she and her 12-year-old daughter had left the U.S. in January for Dublin, where she is eligible to claim citizenship thanks to an Irish father. Ireland has seen unprecedented numbers of Americans seek to take advantage of the provision since the election.
White House adviser Stephen Miller gloated to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that Trump had forced her to “self-deport.”
O’Donnell said Friday that America was “in trouble” and that “cruelty and lack of empathy” had become a “value sprouted from the highest office in our country.”
She said she felt “on the verge of crying when [Trump] got elected” and added she had devised the plan to move to Ireland in consultation with her therapist.
