President Donald Trump reignited his longtime feud with Rosie O’Donnell on Wednesday with an assist from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s MAGA reporter boyfriend.
The president joked to Ireland Prime Minister Micheál Martin he is “better off not knowing” who O’Donnell is after Brian Glenn, Greene’s beau who works for Real America’s Voice, asked Martin why he allowed the comedian to move to his country.
“Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland?” Glenn called out, prefacing his question by noting the Irish are known as “happy, fun-loving people.”
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Martin swayed and chuckled awkwardly in response. Trump acknowledged the question for him, saying, “Thank you, I like that question.”
Trump then turned to his Irish counterpart and asked him if he knew who O’Donnell was. Martin shrugged, smiled, and appeared to whisper, “I don’t know who that is.”
That is when Trump chimed in to say, “You’re better off not knowing her.”
Glenn, 56, was slammed last month for asking Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky if he owned a suit. He clarified after his O’Donnell question he was only “joking” this time.
The encounter comes a day after O’Donnell revealed she left the U.S. in January to move to Dublin with her 12-year-old daughter. She hinted in a TikTok that her move was at least partially due to Trump’s return to the White House that same month.
“It’s been heartbreaking to see what’s happening politically and hard for me personally as well,” she said. “The personal is political, as we all know.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller celebrated the departure of O’Donnell, a 62-year-old Long Island native, by telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday night that Trump forced her to “self-deport.”
“It wasn’t explicitly one of our campaign promises, but it is a major first 100-day achievement,” Miller said of O’Donnell moving. “So, you are welcome America... You don’t have to worry about that problem anymore.”
Trump and O’Donnell’s beef goes way back to 2006—an entire decade before Trump ever won a presidential primary. O’Donnell was co-host of The View at the time and sounded off against Trump amid a Miss USA controversy.
O’Donnell said back then that she did not “enjoy” Trump and claimed he went bankrupt. She went on to say he was not a “self-made man” but was instead a “snake-oil salesman on Little House On The Prairie.”
She added, “[He] left the first wife—had an affair. [He] had kids both times, but he’s the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America. Donald, sit and spin, my friend.”
Trump fired back shortly after in an interview with People, in which he referred to O’Donnell as “my nice fat little Rosie.”
“Rosie will rue the words she said,” he said. “I’ll most likely sue her for making those false statements—and it’ll be fun. Rosie’s a loser. A real loser. I look forward to taking lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie.”
Trump also called in from Mar-a-Lago to attack her in an eight-minute segment on CNN. He also added that week in an Associated Press interview: “I’ve exposed Rosie for what she is: a very dumb human being. She’s got no intelligence, but I’ve known that for a long time. Unfortunately, Rosie’s pulled the wool over the public.”
Their feud continued on and off in the years that followed, but became a national spectacle again once Trump entered politics. His first mention of O’Donnell as a candidate came during the first GOP primary debate after he was asked about his use of words like “fat pigs,” “dogs,” and “slobs” to describe women.
“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump interjected, interrupting Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.
O’Donnell would come up in a second debate in 2016—this time after Hillary Clinton called Trump out for saying nasty things about women.
“Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials,” Trump responded. “Some of it I said in entertainment, some of it I said to somebody who has been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell. I said very tough things to her and I think everybody would agree she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.”
O’Donnell responded by throwing her full support behind Clinton and declaring that her foe would “NEVER BE PRESIDENT.”
Her fear came true shortly after, however, with Trump’s surprise win. O’Donnell responded to the results after Election Day by writing on Twitter: “God help us all.”
