Rosie O’Donnell spent most of the past year keeping a low profile in Ireland, but she walked the red carpet at the 2026 Tony Awards on June 7 and immediately reminded everyone she still has plenty to say about Donald Trump. It was her biggest public appearance in the United States since she packed up and moved overseas, and she did not waste the spotlight on small talk.
Standing in a black, gold and grey patterned suit, the 64-year-old comedian took a direct shot at the president for showing up at Madison Square Garden. “If you grew up in New York you knew he was an a**hole and a liar from day one,” she told reporters, in a clip that spread across social media within hours. For a feud that started two decades ago, the energy has not faded one bit.
“He’s Getting More Crazy By The Day”
The Tony Awards comment was not a one-off. Just weeks earlier, on May 24, O’Donnell posted a roughly one-minute video that racked up more than 263,000 views. In it, she called Trump “deluded” and said he is “getting more crazy by the day.” She was reacting to a New York rally where Trump declared, “I’m the smartest man you’ll ever know.”
O’Donnell turned it into a joke at her own expense. “It’s like me saying I’m the thinnest person you’ve ever seen,” she said. The replies got ugly fast, with plenty of users calling her irrelevant and lobbing personal insults. Others cheered her on. That split reaction is basically the standard response to anything she posts about him, and she clearly knows it. She keeps posting anyway.
A Fight That Goes Back To 2006
If you feel like this beef has been around forever, that is because it nearly has. It kicked off in 2006 when O’Donnell, then a co-host of “The View,” criticized Trump during a “Hot Topics” segment tied to a controversy over Miss USA winner Tara Conner. Trump owned the pageant at the time and fired back, calling her “a woman out of control.”
It escalated from there and never really stopped. During a 2015 presidential debate, when Trump was asked about calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” he name-dropped O’Donnell as if that settled the question. She has said the back-and-forth still catches her off guard. “He’s been doing it for two decades, and I’m still not used to it every time he does,” she said, adding that he uses her as a punchline “whenever he feels the need.”
The Threat To Take Her Citizenship
In July 2025, Trump cranked things up to a level most celebrity feuds never reach. He posted on Truth Social that he was giving “serious consideration” to taking away O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship, calling her “a Threat to Humanity” who “should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her.”
She did not blink. On Instagram, she called him “a bad joke who can’t form a coherent sentence” and wrote, “You lie, you steal, you degrade. I nurture, I create, I persist. You are everything that is wrong with America.” She also dug in with a now-famous line, telling him to “go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan.” Legally, the threat is empty. Birthright citizenship is protected under the 14th Amendment, and a 1967 Supreme Court ruling says the government cannot strip someone’s citizenship without their consent. O’Donnell was born in New York.
The “Cornered Rat” Comeback
When Trump repeated the citizenship threat months later, O’Donnell pointed straight at the Jeffrey Epstein files. Speaking with journalist Jim Acosta, she argued the attacks on her were a distraction from bigger problems. “He’s like a cornered rat and he doesn’t know where to go or what to do,” she said. “So he goes into his bag of tricks, and one of his bag of tricks is, let’s make fun of Rosie O’Donnell and threaten her.”
She did not stop there. She called him “deranged” and even worked in a “Succession” reference, posting that “Logan Roy would be proud” and adding, “EPSTEIN SURVIVORS are the reckoning and your gold lamé throne is melting.” Love her or hate her, the woman knows how to write a line that gets quoted.
Her Quiet Life In Ireland
O’Donnell moved to a Georgian farmhouse near Dublin in January 2025, bringing her youngest child, Clay, who is 13 and has autism. She marked one year there on TikTok in January 2026, thanking the Irish people “for all your welcome, and your love, and your support.” She is eligible for Irish citizenship through her grandparents and is working on becoming a dual citizen. Clay has settled into Irish school and gets special autism support there.
She has been honest about how heavy the whole thing feels. “It has taken me a full year to integrate the reality of him being a president in a way that I don’t come across as either so full of rage that no one can hear my words, or so sad that I can’t articulate the level of pain,” she said. Despite living abroad, she has made clear she is not going quiet.
Trump Fires Back With Memes
Trump has never let her get the last word. In June 2026, he dropped a meme mocking O’Donnell for being “obsessed” with him and questioning her gender. This came after she reacted to his new “Dumocrats” catchphrase. In a speech, Trump had said, “I say the word dumb, I use the word dumb, and dumb has a B in it, a lot of people don’t know that.”
O’Donnell could not resist. She said only a seven-year-old might not know that. Trump has hit her with brutal AI memes before, and he keeps returning to her appearance and identity while she keeps swinging at his rhetoric and mental fitness. It is a very specific kind of stalemate, and both of them seem fine with it.
The AI Jesus Post That Set Her Off
One of her loudest moments in 2026 came in April, after Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself in robes, appearing to heal a sick man, surrounded by divine light, fighter jets, fireworks and an American eagle. It looked a lot like a biblical scene. Trump later said he was playing a doctor in the image, not Jesus.
O’Donnell was not buying that explanation. “We gotta do something, America,” she said, ticking off a list of moves from the administration that worried her, including the Jesus post itself. She was not alone. That image drew criticism from political opponents and some conservative allies too, with plenty of people calling it an inappropriate use of religious imagery. O’Donnell’s reaction was part of a wider backlash.
Even Her Friends Want Her To Log Off
Here is the part that makes the whole thing more human. The people closest to O’Donnell have been begging her to put the phone down. During Trump’s first term, she made more than 200 angry digital portraits of him on her iPad, labeling them things like “Moron,” “Loser” and “Liar.” That level of focus is part of why she felt she had to leave the country in the first place.
She told her 1.2 million Instagram followers she would not give Trump “a minute of me” for three days. She failed. A longtime friend told her, “Roseann, you’ve got to detach. You’ve got to disconnect.” The White House had its own take, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson saying O’Donnell “clearly suffers from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” and that it was “better for the entire country” she moved away. O’Donnell, by her own admission, still spends much of her day scrolling and posting.
Why The Tony Awards Mattered
The June appearance was about more than politics. O’Donnell used the red carpet to talk about her January 2026 facelift, which she had after losing 50 pounds. She said “Authenticity is the goal in these days and times,” and shared a funny detail about Clay, who told her beforehand, “If you do it, I would not be able to respect you ever again,” then never even noticed when she came home 10 days later.
She had been spotted in New York City a couple days earlier, on June 6, and teased a “major work announcement” at the Tonys. She has quietly traveled back to the States twice since the move, first in February 2026 to test how easy it would be to come and go given the citizenship threats, then in April to meet her newborn grandson. The Tony Awards was the loud return, and the MSG jab proved she is not softening her tone for the cameras.
Two Decades In, No Sign Of Stopping
What stands out about this feud is how durable it is. It survived “The View,” two Trump campaigns, a move across the Atlantic, and repeated public threats. Both sides keep score, both sides keep posting, and neither shows interest in letting it go. O’Donnell fires at his words and fitness, Trump fires at her looks and identity, and the cycle just resets.
For now, she is in Howth, raising her kid, working toward Irish citizenship, and still refusing to stay silent about a man she has been arguing with since George W. Bush was in office. Whether you think she should log off or keep going, one thing is clear from the Tony Awards carpet. Rosie O’Donnell is back in the American spotlight, and she came ready to talk.