After Rosie O'Donnell's move to Ireland, Trump tells Irish PM he's 'better off not knowing' who she is

Christie D’Zurilla, Los Angeles Times on Mar 12, 2025

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Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Rosie O’Donnell announced she has moved to Ireland.

The comedian, who shared the news in a TikTok video Tuesday, said she pulled up stakes and jumped the pond Jan. 15 with the youngest of her five kids. O’Donnell said she’s “in the process” of getting Irish citizenship as she has Irish grandparents and intends to stay overseas until “it is safe, you know, for all citizens to have equal rights there, in America, that’s when we will consider coming back.”

The move came less than a week before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who was O’Donnell’s sparring partner and nemesis long before he was first elected.

Their rivalry started in 2006, when O’Donnell accused Trump of using an underage drinking scandal involving Miss USA Tara Conner to promote the Miss USA pageant itself, calling him a “snake-oil salesman” and more. She mentioned his marital infidelities in challenging Trump as an arbiter of moral behavior. He called her “fat” and “a woman out of control.” Conner kept her title, while Trump threatened to sue O’Donnell during appearances on several media outlets. He did not file suit.

The two continued to trade public blows, including when O’Donnell’s show on OWN was axed in 2012. Trump crowed on social media that “Rosie O’Donnell has failed again. Her ratings were abysmal and Oprah cancelled her on Friday night. When will media executives learn that Rosie just hasn’t got it.”

He also told Fox News by phone at the time that “Rosie fails at everything. She had a variety show that failed. ... Somebody else, some moron, will come and hire her again to do something else, and that will fail. At some point, let her rest. Let her go away.”

When O’Donnell returned to “The View” for its 18th season in 2014, Trump tweeted, “Rosie is crude, rude, obnoxious and dumb — other than that I like her very much!” That came after he posted, “Rosie is back on the View which tells you how desperate they must be. It is the standard short term fix and long term disaster.”

Once he was in office in 2017, after he fired FBI Director James Comey, Trump dug up an old “FIRE COMEY” tweet from the comedian and cited the personnel move as something he and O’Donnell finally agreed on. Later that year, O’Donnell called the president “Adolf Trump” on social media and said that anyone who stood with him or worked for him was a Nazi.

And when moderator Megyn Kelly challenged Trump in a 2015 GOP debate over his history of calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” Trump jumped in with a qualifier: “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he said.

The comedian hasn’t relented in taking shots at Trump via social media over the years, though her former Twitter account has been decommissioned and tells no tales. But in December, after Time named him its 2024 person of the year, O’Donnell said on TikTok, “How about most dangerous man of the year? How about most criminal man of the year? How about the worst president we’ve ever had … of the year.”

She added, “There wasn’t one person you could think of that wasn’t that lying, criminal guy? Not one person of the year? Man of the year should be changed to human of the year. Start looking at the women, you patriarchal f—. My God, it’s so frustrating.”

Then on Wednesday, when Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin was meeting with the president at the White House, a reporter asked, “Why would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland?”

Trump said, “I like that question!,” then asked Martin, “Do you know who she is?”

Martin did not.

“You’re better off not knowing,” the president said.

O’Donnell said in her TikTok video that the people in Ireland have been welcoming to her and her nonbinary 12-year-old, who in recent years changed their name from Dakota — deemed “too feminine,” her mom said — to Clay.

Clay’s service dog made the trip as well. “Kuma is with us and doing great and loves, loves taking walks on the cliffs overlooking the Irish sea,” O’Donnell said. “Kuma is in heaven.”

But she’s bummed she didn’t bring her SLR camera overseas, because apparently she has found the scenery to be photogenic. The iPhone camera is good, she said, but it’s not the SLR. And she’s also learning what to do on Substack, she said, because she couldn’t figure out Facebook.

“I’m happy. Clay is happy,” O’Donnell said. “I miss my other kids. I miss my friends. I miss many things about life there at home, and I’m trying to find a home here, in this beautiful country.”

Celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Cher, Sharon Stone and Ellen DeGeneres also threatened to leave the U.S. if Trump was reelected, but of that group, only DeGeneres has made good on her promise, moving to England with wife Portia de Rossi after buying a place in the Cotswolds before the 2024 election.