Rosie O’Donnell may be notorious for having a longtime feud with President Donald Trump, but the comedian blamed the mainstream media for “giving” Trump his presidency while making a Monday-night appearance on MSNBC.
Speaking to The Beat With Ari Melber about the White House protest she is jumpstarting with Broadway stars, O’Donnell went on a tirade against the media for being too “slow in coming around” to calling Trump a “liar.”
“The reason he’s not so panicked about Russia is because he knows that they’re going to try again exactly what they did in 2016,” O’Donnell said. “Although the mainstream media won’t say it yet. They actually gave him the election. I believe that firmly and I think a lot of people do.”
Though speaking to MSNBC, the comedian did not shy away from critiquing the network for being one of the outlets that refused to be sufficiently critical of Trump. “It took you guys a long time to call him a liar, and the man’s been lying every single day since he’s been in office,” she argued.
Though the president and O’Donnell have notoriously feuded in the past, with Trump once referring to her as a “fat pig,” the comedian says she’s actually “never spoken” to Trump. “He was on my show once. …. But I never spoke to him in my life.”
The negative banter between both stars was something O’Donnell said was “foreshadowing” of how Trump would act in his political future. While Trump was asked about his treatment of women during the 2016 GOP election, the former presidential candidate quipped that he had only referred to O’Donnell in demeaning terminology such as “dogs” and “slobs.” The moment was something O’Donnell argued was supported by the media.
“He was allowed to with help from the mainstream media and MSNBC. All you have to do is look at the tapes from Morning Joe from 2007. … They all ganged up, Willie Geist was very anti-Rosie O’Donnell. So was Joe Scarborough, so was every reporter on Fox, and it went on and on.”
O’Donnell also said that media treated Hillary Clinton and Trump as “equals.” “Mainstream media treated him like a legitimate candidate as if they were two equals, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and it was falsehood from the start.”
Continuing to slam the media for being “lifetime civil servants” to Trump, O’Donnell also called for Congress to impeach the president for he has a “serious mental disorder.”
“Nobody would stand up to him, and they would let him,” O’Donnell said. “It was as if only Rosie O’Donnell could’ve been the 700 girls who are missing from the border, only Stormy Daniels, only all these Mexicans he derides and diminishes every chance he gets.”
On Monday, O’Donnell is set to serenade Trump from Lafayette Park with popular Broadway songs alongside castmembers from some of Broadway’s biggest musicals, such as Wicked and Phantom of the Opera while standing outside the White House in protest. The group will sing “The People’s Song” from Les Miserables, Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” ”A Brand New Day” from The Wiz and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music.
Trump “changed the narrative and the factual truth about who I am to the public of America” – @Rosie
“He’s a horrible, horrible human with no soul” pic.twitter.com/fFj5DveNmC
— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) August 6, 2018
