Former President Donald Trump reignited his long-running feud with Rosie O’Donnell on Wednesday, saying he was giving “serious thought” to stripping the actress and comedian of her U.S. citizenship — a move he has threatened before but has no legal authority to carry out.
"As previously mentioned, we are giving serious thought to taking away Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship. She is not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so!" Trump posted on Truth Social. He had made similar claims in July, calling her a “Threat to Humanity” and insisting she was not in the “best interests of our Great Country.”
O’Donnell clapped back at the July remarks with a mocking comparison, calling Trump “king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan” and vowing she would never be silenced. The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, and O’Donnell — born in Commack, New York — cannot legally lose hers by presidential decree.
The comedian recently moved to Ireland with her daughter and has begun the process of obtaining dual citizenship, citing Trump’s return to power and the current political climate. “When it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that’s when we will consider coming back,” she said in a TikTok post earlier this year.
Trump, meanwhile, has mocked her abroad as well. When asked by a reporter in March about O’Donnell’s move during the Irish prime minister’s White House visit, Trump interjected: “Do you know who she is? You’re better off not knowing.”
The pair’s bitter rivalry stretches back nearly two decades. It began in 2006 when O’Donnell criticized Trump on The View for his handling of a Miss USA scandal. Trump escalated the feud during the 2015 Republican primary debate when he famously retorted to a question about derogatory language toward women with: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
O’Donnell has courted her own controversy recently. Last month, she posted a video after a Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis that falsely claimed the gunman was a Republican, a White supremacist, and a Trump supporter. She later deleted the video and issued an apology, admitting she had made an “emotional statement” without verifying facts. “When you mess up, you fess up. I’m sorry,” she told followers.