In a new interview with W magazine, Rosie O’Donnell opened up about how she felt the day after Donald Trump was elected president.
On election night, O’Donnell was in Boston filming her new show “SMILF,” and she admitted she was in good spirits, making jokes with the cast and crew. When the results were announced, though, she said she didn’t feel prepared at all.
“I remember that night before they were announcing who had won, I saw the Trump children with their children on TV, and they were on an Instagram or something,” she said. “They were taking a video going, ‘Grandpa’s gonna be the president!’ I literally felt such sorrow inside of me that these people were so deluded. What were they doing with this child to tell the baby their grandfather’s going to be president? He’s not going to be president! Are you out of your minds? Cut to ... right? I was completely unprepared.”
For O’Donnell, it felt personal.
“Because 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,” she said, referencing her longstanding public feud with POTUS. “No one ― not the National Organization For Women, not Gloria Steinem, no one ― stood up and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’”
For the past 10 years, the two have exchanged countless barbs on social media, with neither letting up. The social media feud has been traced back to 2006, when O’Donnell criticized Trump on “The View,” saying he was “not a self-made man” but instead a “snake-oil salesman.” In response, Trump threatened to sue the comedian and called her “fat” and “a real loser.”
“There’s no one that he won’t attack or debase,” O’Donnell continued. “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].”
The former talk show host went on to list a few of the many people Trump has insulted online, including Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) and Myeshia Johnson, wife of the U.S. soldier killed in Niger.
“He has a dubious moral character,” O’Donnell said.
The interview with W, O’Donnell noted, is one of her first since Trump was elected, as she said it’s taken her “a full year” to let the reality sink in.
“It’s taken a year for me to get my equilibrium back, to come back up to the surface, to really go, ‘Okay, every Monday is the hope that this is the last week’ — and every Friday is a devastation,” she said.
She continued: “There are people who tell me, ‘Oh it’s going to be another year, another two years,’ and I seriously worry whether I personally will be able to live through [his presidency] and whether the nation will be able to live through it and survive. It’s a terrifying concept, on the brink of nuclear war with a madman in charge. And the ineptitude ― the impotence of people who should be able to stop him claiming they can’t ― is absolutely infuriating.”
You can read O’Donnell’s full interview at W magazine.