Rosie O'Donnell revealed that country music star Wynonna Judd is the lone Trump supporter in her life, and admitted she cannot understand anyone else who backs the president.
O'Donnell, 64, made the remarks on a recent episode of The Tangle with Kyle Ridley podcast, where she described a friendship with Judd that survives only because the two women never discuss politics. The former talk show host, who moved to Ireland before President Trump's second inauguration, used much of the interview to air her contempt for Trump and to explain why she has cut virtually every other conservative out of her personal life.
That an entertainer who built a second career on opposing Trump would struggle to maintain friendships across political lines is hardly surprising. But the interview offered a revealing window into a mindset shared by much of Hollywood: the belief that supporting a twice-elected president is so morally disqualifying that it requires a special exemption, a "grace," in O'Donnell's word, to overlook.
O'Donnell told Ridley she has known Judd, 62, for years and considers the country star a close friend. She framed her willingness to maintain the relationship as an act of compassion rooted in Judd's personal losses, including the death of Judd's mother by suicide and what O'Donnell called "the complicated nature of her upbringing."
The Daily Mail reported O'Donnell's full remarks on the friendship:
"I kind of give her a grace in a way. She's had so much in her life with her mom taking her own life, just the complicated nature of her upbringing, and I really love her and I care about her and for some reason I'm able to put that aside when we interact."
The phrase "put that aside" is worth pausing on. O'Donnell did not describe a disagreement she respects or a difference she has learned from. She described a flaw she overlooks because she feels sorry for the person who holds it. That is not tolerance. It is pity with conditions.
She made the limits of her flexibility explicit. Beyond Judd, O'Donnell said she has no room for anyone who supports the president.
"But aside from Wy, I can't think of anyone else in my life who supports him and I don't understand the people who do."
She added: "I don't really have any people in my life who support Trump, I think it would be very difficult to do that."
Tens of millions of Americans voted for Trump. O'Donnell can find space for exactly one of them, and only because personal tragedy earns that voter a dispensation. The rest, apparently, are beyond her comprehension.
O'Donnell left the United States before Trump's second inauguration and settled in Ireland, where she told Ridley she has found both lower stress and ideological company. She said no one she has encountered in Ireland supports Trump.
"People come up to me and go, 'Rosie, I'd like to buy you a pint because we hate him too.' And I'm like, 'Fantastic.'"
She described the move in therapeutic terms, saying the "stress level in the United States is so high compared to Ireland" and that she has found "a peace" there that she called "very healing."
Not every celebrity who opposes Trump has chosen to leave the country, of course. Some have stayed and continued to use major platforms to criticize the president. Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen, for example, used a late-night farewell broadcast to take public shots at Trump, drawing a response from the White House.
O'Donnell's approach is different. She did not stay to fight. She left, surrounded herself with people who agree with her, and now marvels at the peace she feels. That is her right. But it is a strange perch from which to lecture Americans about their own political choices.
O'Donnell presented her friendship with Judd as a case of looking past a personal failing. But Judd's engagement with the Trump administration was not a character defect, it was civic participation. In 2019, during Trump's first term, Judd visited the White House to advocate for criminal justice reform and discuss prison reintegration initiatives.
That visit aligned with the bipartisan First Step Act, one of the signature achievements of Trump's first term. Judd used her platform to push for policy that helped incarcerated people re-enter society. O'Donnell frames that as something to forgive. Most Americans would call it something to admire.
Judd has not been especially public about her political views beyond that visit. She has not made endorsements a centerpiece of her career. In 2017, after her sister Ashley Judd recited an anti-Trump poem at the Women's March on Washington, Wynonna posted on social media: "I am not my sister's keeper. The end." That was not a political manifesto. It was a boundary.
The contrast between the two Judd sisters is instructive. Ashley turned a political march into performance. Wynonna went to the White House and worked on policy. O'Donnell treats the latter as the problem.
O'Donnell's hostility toward Trump is not new. It dates to 2006, when she was a co-host on The View and criticized Trump for threatening to strip Tara Conner of her Miss USA title after controversies involving underage drinking and cocaine use. O'Donnell called Trump a hypocrite and told him to "sit and spin." Trump responded by calling her "a loser" and "out of control."
Twenty years later, the dynamic has not changed much. O'Donnell continues to attack Trump in increasingly sweeping terms. On the podcast, she called him "a very dark spirit" and listed what she described as "his cruelty," "his misogyny, his racism, his homophobia." She said she does not understand "why that's not obvious to the world."
In a Variety interview described as taking place last month, she called Trump "the worst thing that ever happened to our country." That is not political analysis. It is a bumper sticker.
Meanwhile, other entertainers who once attacked Trump publicly have reconsidered. Michael Rapaport admitted he was wrong about Trump after years of vocal opposition. O'Donnell has shown no similar willingness to re-examine her position. From her new home in Ireland, the view only hardens.
Trump, for his part, posted on social media that he was "giving serious consideration to taking away her citizenship" after O'Donnell moved abroad. The Trump family has remained in the public eye for reasons well beyond any feud with O'Donnell, his granddaughter Kai Trump recently obtained a restraining order against an alleged stalker in Palm Beach County.
O'Donnell's interview distills a particular kind of progressive insularity. She has arranged her life so that exactly one Trump supporter remains in it, and she justifies that exception on the grounds of personal sympathy rather than political respect. Everyone else who voted the same way as Wynonna Judd gets no such grace.
She told Ridley she thinks Trump's flaws are obvious "outside the US" and marveled that strangers in Ireland share her views. She described leaving America as healing. She cannot name a single other Trump supporter she is willing to know.
This is not bridge-building. It is not even disagreement. It is a 64-year-old woman who moved to another country, surrounded herself with people who think exactly as she does, and now wonders aloud why half of America sees things differently.
The answer is not complicated. They live here.