In an interview with W Magazine,
out actress Rosie O'Donnell talks about her decade-long feud with
President Donald Trump.
The pair have been going at it since at
least 2006, when O'Donnell, then a co-host on ABC's The View,
criticized Trump for publicly chastising the reigning Miss USA for
underage drinking.
“He annoys me on a multitude of
levels,” O'Donnell said. “He's the moral authority? Left the
first wife. Had an affair. Left the second wife. Had an affair.
Had kids both times. But he's the moral compass for 20-year-olds in
America? Donald, sit and spin my friend.”
Trump threatened to sue O'Donnell,
saying he looked forward “to taking lots of money from my nice fat
little Rosie.”
When O'Donnell announced her engagement
to Michelle Rounds in 2011 – the pair later split – Trump
congratulated the couple by calling O'Donnell “a true loser” on
Twitter.
(Related: Rosie
O'Donnell's ex-wife Michelle Rounds dies at 46.)
Trump also took a shot at O'Donnell
during a GOP presidential debate in 2015.
“You've called women you don't like
fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals ...” moderator Megyn
Kelly started.
“Only Rosie O'Donnell,” Trump
interrupted.
“For the record, it was well beyond
Rosie O'Donnell,” Kelly responded.
O'Donnell, who is promoting her latest
project, Showtime's upcoming SMILF, criticized the media for
ignoring Trump's character during the election.
“Unbeknownst to me, for reasons I
can’t really still figure out, he was allowed with impunity to
brutally assault me and my character for a decade. No one – not the
National Organization For Women, not Gloria Steinem, no one – stood
up and said, 'What the hell are you doing?' It was laughed about. Oh,
'Rosie O’Donnell and Megyn Kelly, ha ha ha, let him in, would bring
him out,'” O'Donnell said.
“Watching him do the 'Destroy Rosie
O’Donnell' charade in the same way that he’s been trying to
destroy the character of everyone, from Representative [Frederica]
Wilson to the wife of the Marine that was killed in Niger, all these
things. He’s debasing the character of James Comey. There’s no
one that he won’t attack or debase. When it was only me in that
arena, it was a very lonely, isolated and depressing place to be.
Even though [people say], 'Oh you started it,' well I actually told
the truth about him on a show where my job was to talk about pop
culture [Laughs.].”
“What I said, he’s threatened to
sue me, and you can’t sue someone if they tell the truth, right?
What’s the truth? He was bankrupt four times, he got his money from
his father, he never pays his contractors. He has a dubious moral
character. These are things that were not hard to find, yet the media
refused to print them a decade ago. And when he started to run, they
all went in their turtle shells and acted like they had no idea that
this was the essence of this man, when had they only turned on
Wikipedia, they could have found out everything that we now know is
fact. And we wouldn’t have him as president if they had done their
jobs,” she
added.