{"id":493,"date":"2026-07-28T04:14:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=493"},"modified":"2026-07-28T04:14:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T04:14:05","slug":"trump-tried-to-make-an-example-of-rosie-odonnell-it-backfired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=493","title":{"rendered":"Trump tried to make an example of Rosie O\u2019Donnell. It backfired."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

During the make-up White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner last Friday, the President of the United States tried to take a swipe at an old foe. \u201cEven Rosie O\u2019Donnell reached out from Ireland,\u201d he told the room. \u201cShe was desperate to come back to the United States and pay her respects to Donald J. Trump. But that didn\u2019t work out, unfortunately, because nobody wanted her to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more MAGA\u2019s backup plan to end birthright citizenship relies on a racist legal relic<\/a><\/p>\n

The joke wasn\u2019t merely unfunny, it was also inaccurate.\u00a0O\u2019Donnell already came back to the country. Two nights before Trump\u2019s speech, she opened her new comedy show, which centers on her life and feud with Trump, at Manhattan\u2019s Daryl Roth Theatre. On Thursday, she appeared on \u201cLate Night with Seth Meyers.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>And next month, she will\u00a0guest host\u00a0\u201cJimmy Kimmel Live!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

After the 2024 presidential election, O\u2019Donnell actually did what many Americans threatened to do \u2013\u00a0leave the country. But now she is back, and\u00a0that matters \u2013 because the story was never just about O\u2019Donnell herself. It was also about the rest of us, the people watching Trump attack her.<\/p>\n

While co-hosting a 2006 episode of \u201cThe View,\u201d then one of the biggest daytime platforms in America, O\u2019Donnell said that Trump was not self-made\u00a0and was in no position to lecture anyone about morality. At the time, the landlord-turned-game show host was furious, but the feud was tabloid fodder rather than national news.<\/p>\n

Two decades and two presidential inaugurations later, Trump still hasn\u2019t let it go \u2013 and O\u2019Donnell hasn\u2019t backed down. There were years of insults, including the 2015 primary debate where moderator Megyn Kelly asked Trump about women he\u2019d called pigs and slobs and he cut her off with three words: \u201conly Rosie O\u2019Donnell.\u201d He brought her up again in his first debate with Hillary Clinton. And on Friday, in a ballroom filled with media elite who have yet to call him out as bluntly and forcefully as O\u2019Donnell has, Trump called her a \u201ca sick young woman. Sick older woman, I guess now I have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two-time president of the United States, in other words, has spent twenty years returning to the same woman. She was among the first with a national platform to publicly refuse the premise his whole life is built on, and he has never been able to get over it.<\/p>\n

Read more Tom Homan\u2019s remarks on vetting reflect ICE\u2019s growing PR crisis<\/a><\/p>\n

Which is what makes\u00a0his threat last summer worth remembering: \u201cBecause of the fact that Rosie O\u2019Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a serious legal proposal \u2013 the president cannot revoke a native-born American\u2019s citizenship \u2013 as much as it was a MAGA theory of belonging. In threatening O\u2019Donnell, Trump threatened to make citizenship a privilege he extends and can revoke (based on mere speech, no less). It was a warning to any critic whose passport is the only thing standing between them and a very different life and who doesn\u2019t have O\u2019Donnell\u2019s resources or profile.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is an obvious objection to holding Rosie up as any kind of resistance example:\u00a0she left. Staying carries real moral weight. Many people who have absorbed this past decade of Trump\u2019s politics did not have an\u00a0Irish grandmother\u00a0or the means to build a life somewhere else. There is something a little uncomfortable about resistance broadcast from another country, particularly when only some can afford it. But in the context of a twenty-year battle with the now-most-powerful man in the world, a regrouping abroad is not surrender.<\/p>\n

And the impetus for her decision is crucial: \u201cI knew, after reading Project 2025, that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my non-binary child to leave the country,\u201d she told CNN last year. After years of being Trump\u2019s favorite target, O\u2019Donnell had better reason than almost anyone alive to know his obsession with settling scores and having things his way. Indeed, she knew better than much of institutional Washington, which was still reassuring itself about guardrails, norms, and adults in the room. Many institutions folded alarmingly quickly this time around: the museums, the law firms, the universities. O\u2019Donnell did not wait for them to capitulate.<\/p>\n

Yet she did not disappear. Now she is telling her story on her own terms,\u00a0projecting Trump\u2019s own words onto a theater wall for audiences that laugh at them instead of with them. While on Friday, the president described a broken woman pleading across the Atlantic, the actual Rosie was onstage a short train ride away, turning his words into part of her act. Twenty years after he decided she would be the punchline, she is still standing.<\/p>\n

That is why Trump keeps coming back to O\u2019Donnell. His campaign against her only worked if it ended with her gone or begging him for forgiveness. Personal intimidation is never only about the person being targeted. It is a warning to others: cross me and you will regret it. Too many institutions accepted that bargain. Rosie O\u2019Donnell never did. In trying to make an example of her, Trump only made a point \u2013 and not the one he intended.<\/p>\n

Read more MaddowBlog<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president\u2019s shot at the comedian had a point \u2013 but not the one Trump intended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump tried to make an example of Rosie O\u2019Donnell. It backfired. - Long Distance Movers USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=493\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump tried to make an example of Rosie O\u2019Donnell. 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