Ellen DeGeneres is showing her support for friend Rosie O’Donnell as President Donald Trump erroneously claims to threaten her U.S. citizenship.
“Good for you @rosie,” DeGeneres, 67, wrote via Instagram on Sunday, July 13, sharing screenshots of the president’s post on his social media app, Truth Social, and O’Donnell’s subsequent response.
On Saturday, July 12, President Donald Trump threatened to revoke O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship, despite having no constitutional authority to do so.
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote on the social media platform. “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
According to expert Julia Gelatt, who spoke to The New York Times, a president does not have the power to take away a U.S-born citizen’s citizenship.
“U.S citizens can relinquish their citizenship voluntarily, and federal courts can strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship if there is proven fraud or misrepresentation or other major cause,” Gelatt, an associate director of the immigration program at the Migration Policy Institute, told the publication. “But U.S.-born citizens cannot have their citizenship taken away.
O’Donnell promptly reacted to the president’s threat, taking to social media to respond.
“Hey donald — you’re rattled again? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. You call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman a queer woman a mother who tells the truth an american who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze,” O’Donnell 63, wrote via Instagram on Saturday.
“You build walls – I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists,” she continued in the post, which featured a picture of the president posting for a photo alongside convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “You crave loyalty – I teach my children to question power. You sell fear on golf courses — I nurture, I create, I persist. You are everything that is wrong with america — and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it. You want to revoke my citizenship? Go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan. I’m not yours to silence i never was.”
O’Donnell announced in March that she moved to Ireland and was in the process of getting her citizenship. DeGeneres and her wife, Portia de Rossi, relocated to the English countryside last year. O’Donnell confessed to Us Weekly in an exclusive interview that she hasn’t been in touch with DeGeneres, 67, and was “shocked” by her decision to leave the U.S.
“I’ve never really known Ellen to say anything political in her life, so I was surprised to read that she left because of President Trump. Like, that shocked me, actually,” O’Donnell told Us. I’ve been a political person my whole life, not better or worse, it’s just a different way to be in the world. I was very clear about the reason why I was leaving, and I don’t think it came as a surprise to anyone. We’re not really in each other’s worlds, and it’s been kind of awkward but you know what? I wish her the best. I wish that she has peace and love in her life and that she is OK.”
Despite not having the strongest relationship with DeGeneres, O’Donnell doesn’t have any “malice” towards her whatsoever.
“I don’t want to fight against another gay woman. It’s not like we’re tenaciously opposed to each other. We’re just very different people. We have had some stuff in the past that we never resolved. And not in any way as, as partners or lovers or anything like that, just as friends and comedians, but I wish her the best. I seriously do,” she told Us. “I think that there’s enough room in the world for all of the gay comedians, and we all need to stick together because gay people are the next group to be threatened. And the way they attack trans people is absolutely terrifying. If people don’t understand that they’re a vital part of the LBGTQIA+ community, that’s tragic because we protect our own, especially the most vulnerable.”
