‘ROSEANNE WHO?’

Valerie Jarrett Shrugs Off Roseanne, Defends Obama’s Trump Silence

Appearing on ‘The View,’ the former Obama adviser said she hopes people won’t watch Roseanne Barr’s first big TV interview with Sean Hannity this Thursday night.

The first thing the host of The View did when former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett joined them at the table on Wednesday was to subject her to the unhinged ranting of Roseanne Barr, who released a video this past week that culminated in her shouting about Jarrett, “I thought the bitch was white!”

Asked how she would respond to that bizarre attempt to clean up the mess left by her past racist tweets, Jarrett simply smiled and asked, “Roseanne who?”

“In all seriousness, as I have said before, I’m fine. I am just fine,” Jarrett added, reiterating what she said just after ABC decided to cancel its Roseanne reboot. “If one of you said something like that about me, that might hurt my feelings, but this isn't what keeps me up at night. What keeps me up at night are those families being separated on the borders or our children that go to school worrying about whether or not they are going to be safe when their parents drop them off. These are the things that keep me up at night. Racist tweets and profane videos, no, not so much.”

And she could barely stifle her laughter when co-host Sunny Hostin noted that Barr will be giving her first television interview since the firing to Sean Hannity on Fox News this Thursday night. Asked what she hopes Barr says, Jarrett answered, “Less is more, don’t you think?” adding, "I won't be watching, I hope you all won't be watching either.”

From there, Joy Behar moved the conversation to more important matters, namely why her former boss, “the real president that we just had,” President Barack Obama, has been so reluctant to call Donald Trump out by name. During his recent speech in South Africa, Obama seemed to be “subtweeting” Trump, as The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah put it, but he did not criticize him directly.

“I believe we're in a lot of trouble here that I have never seen before in my lifetime of any president,” Behar said. “And I would like Obama to speak out against it, because I know it's bad form very often for a former president to speak of a sitting president, but this is an emergency.”

“It's not just bad form, I think his view is, and he said this before he left office, it's time for all of us to step up,” Jarrett, who was promoting her new memoir Finding My Voice, replied. “He’s now a citizen like all of you, and he is spending time helping the next generation of leaders and we shouldn't just look to his voice all the time. Your voices are just as important.”

Behar immediately shot back, “No, no, no they’re not,” to which Jarrett admitted that maybe they are not “just as important” but they are “very important.”

“Let's face it, he could speak up every single day, right?” Jarrett added. “And that's not the way he wants to spend his time.”

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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