Rosie O’Donnell has never shied away from a microphone. And while her decades-long public feud with Donald Trump has at times been fodder for tabloids, she is quite clear that her decision to move to Ireland, her ancestral home, was all about her family and her own self-preservation. Rosie and Nicolle first met as co-hosts thrown together to debate on “The View”, but they developed a friendship that continues today. This episode shows the breadth of that connection, as Rosie reflects on the continual chaos Trump brings to the country each day, shares some memories about “The View” and Barbara Streisand, and issues a call to action for people feeling lost: find your community.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Rosie O’Donnell: People saying, I’m canceling my trip to Disney. I’m canceling my Hulu, my Disney+ plus, $4 billion in four days. Bravo, America. And this is how much power we have. And don’t let them tell you we don’t.
Nicolle Wallace: Hi, everyone. And welcome to The Best People podcast. This week’s guest is known the world over. She’s an icon known for making people laugh. And these days making a lot of us think really hard and really deeply about the things happening around us to other humans. She, and I, were cast originally as political adversaries. Luckily for me, we have since become friends and allies, my deepest, deepest, thanks to you, Rosie O’Donnell for appearing on The Best People podcast. Thank you so much.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I’ll do whatever you need, Nicolle. We had our magical flight where we sat together to Miami.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: And everything shifted and it was a beautiful thing.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I think that’s a great place to start because I think that maybe the whole country is locked in these castings as enemies. And you never saw people that way. And I understand now that your pain wasn’t about politics. It was about things that people were doing to humans. And I wonder as someone who I know feels everything, how you are doing.
Rosie O’Donnell: You know, I will say that I came here out of self-preservation. You know, some people said, oh, you’re making a political statement. I didn’t tell anyone I was moving. I read Project 2025. And I saw that he won and I called my therapist and said, I need to go to Ireland. This was the only place. I mean, a hundred percent Irish. I was here as a little kid after my mother died. And you know, this is where my people are.
So I went to my people and it was totally because I knew how badly I did during his first term. And I knew now that I had a daughter about to be 12, that I needed to be present, awake and aware for the teenage years. They’re not easy and they’re not easy when you’re 63. So, I adopted this baby at 50 and I owe her the best part of me. And I couldn’t afford the risk of being completely debilitated by what was about to happen and everything I feared and everything I read in that book has come true.
Nicolle Wallace: I think there’s so much there. We could spend the hour talking about that. I had my daughter when I was 51 and I wonder there’s something pretty glorious about motherhood at 50. There’s just an infinite amount of patience. There’s an infinite amount of awe at them. What has it been like?
Rosie O’Donnell: It’s the best decision I ever made. You know, I got a call from my lawyer who had helped me with Parker’s adoption, who said they had a birth mother that wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a dad in the family. They had some horrific experiences and they wanted to know if they could place the baby with a just single mother or two moms.
And so, the lawyer called me to say, do you know any lesbians with a home study? And I keep my home study updated. Just in case I get a random call and I did. And I said, can you tell her it’s me? Can you tell her that we’d have to have her sign a non-disclosure because I don’t want her privacy? And she doesn’t know what it could be like, and I don’t want the baby’s privacy or my privacy or the birth, you know, everybody’s invaded. So she said, yes. And I met her and it was the first time I was at the birth of one of my children besides Vivi.
And so I got to be there with the birth mother who, after all that work, the nurse wrapped that baby up and went over to hand her to the birth mother who had just labored to get this baby out. And the birth mother said, no, no, that’s not my baby. That’s hers. She’s the mother. Give that baby to her. And I start to cry. You know, I thought I’ve never witnessed God’s grace so profoundly as I did in that moment, when this woman who loved her baby and knew she couldn’t give that baby what the baby deserved, graciously handed her to someone who felt that they could, you know, and, it profoundly moved me and changed me.
And, you know, then she got diagnosed a little after one, almost two, because she was speaking in full sentences, you know, she was watching “Frozen” and she tapped me on the shoulder and said, I’ve been impaled. And then Olaf said, I’ve been impaled in the same tone. And I knew from having five kids and two foster kids that we were in for some journey with this one, you know? And so, it’s been a miraculous ride and I’m grateful every day for her and for her birth mother and for, you know, the gift that she is in my life.
Nicolle Wallace: And I think people know you around your decades’ long feud with Donald Trump, but the decision to leave is centered around being a mother to this child, right?
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes. A hundred percent. My other children weren’t interested in coming and you know, they have their own lives. I respect that for them, but I miss them every day. I miss being part of the daily minutia. I miss being on the same time zone, you know, I miss so much of their life that, you know, it’s been a sacrifice for me. But I knew in order to save myself, I had to adjust —
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: — my mask first before I could save my kids. You know?
Nicolle Wallace: And you’re a homebody, right?
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, you —
Rosie O’Donnell: It’s surprising, but I am.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. When I knew you, you were a homebody when we worked together on The View.
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes. Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And if we came in and told a story, all your stories centered on the home, and you had more kids living at home, but you were creating art at home. Your home was a forever home for all of your kids regardless of their age. And you were a nester. And I wonder what it’s been like personally to move your nest.
Rosie O’Donnell: It was scary. I have to say. And I didn’t even really tell friends because I’m such a homebody. I never go to Europe. I don’t travel. The only places I’ve been is when Madonna has invited me on her birthday to go to Cuba. Then I did, because I knew her sister was going to be there and I could hang out with her sister and we would have fun and stay in the hotel. And you know, like I’m not a traveler. I like to be in a country where I could speak the language. And I know how to say to a doctor, I think it’s my appendix, but it could be my gallbladder because I just fear, like, what if I’m in France and there’s an emergency, what am I going to do? You know, everyone goes to your phone will translate. I’m like not good enough. You know? I also don’t like to be away from my children.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: So, my friends would say, oh, we have a yacht in Greece for two weeks. I’m like, yes, no. So, wherever I went, it was Florida. It was Miami. It was familiar. So doing this was a tremendous jump for me. And a lot of my friends have told me since that they were very worried that it was going to go south right away.
Nicolle Wallace: It seems though, and I read everything. I watch everything that you post. And I read everything. It seems like your voice never wavered. And I would say it’s clearer and stronger than ever.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, some of my friends said, well, you’re not going to move there and then still rile him. And I’m like, I’m not riling him. I’m telling the British or here, like Paul Revere.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: And I have a microphone however small it is. Some people I know they don’t enjoy me. Some people, you know, misunderstand and or see me clearly and reject it. And that’s okay too, because when you’re a public figure, this is the price you pay. This is what happens. And you know, I never became an artist to have everyone like me. People did like me, because I think I’m likable. I care about people. I really do. I care about everybody’s feelings. I care about well, you know, you’re not like that with Trump. No, but if you can’t see that there’s a mad man in the house, you’re never going to protect the kids. There’s a mad man in the White House and we need to protect the kids and the women and everyone else.
Nicolle Wallace: Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach are two people that I interviewed. And they’ve done some of what you’re talking about. I mean, they’ve always used their platform for good.
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: They’ve always motivated their community to give to other causes. But they are now sitting in immigration court with the same mission you’re talking about, they’re bearing witness if that’s all that they can do. And they’re trying to help kids whose families are being separated by the immigration policies. And I wonder how you explain to people in Ireland that ask you what’s going on in your country, you know, where do you start?
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I would say this. This country is very educated about politics. And I have only met two people since January who were Trump supporters. Everyone else, Nicolle, when I go into a pub, they’re like, hey, Rosie, this is on me. We hate him too. We think he’s a horror and everyone feels that way. So, there isn’t the maniacal cult-like fascination with him in America and in there, there’s not here. And that allows me to have sanity.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: Because seeing what they’re projecting as half the country, when it is not, I don’t believe that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: I believe they’re a minority and they’re acting like a majority because he has a cult-like control. Thanks to Mark Burnett’s Apprentice show that lied to the American people that sold fiction as fact, and people were confused and lied to and then they listened to Fox News and they were more lost.
So when people say I changed my mind, we have to say welcome back to reality. Let’s all be Americans together. Right? Because what’s happening is not only happening to Democrats. It’s happening to everyone. And when the Medicaid cuts go in, old people are going to start to die, to die. What he’s done hasn’t even hit us yet.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Rosie O’Donnell: And if he’s not stopped now, we have lost our country. And I don’t know, Nicolle, how it is that some people cannot see it. My therapist said, why are you so upset? And I said to her, why are you not?
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Yes. I have that conversation too. Because the gas lighting that I think you’re alluding to, if you’re a thoughtful, informed person, you do stop and say, well maybe it is me. But the truth is he’s more unpopular now than he’s ever been. And at the same time, the other side of that coin seems to be he’s more emboldened than ever. What do you think that’s about having known him and having been face to face with him?
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I don’t know him and I only spoke to him one time for four minutes at the Survivor reunion that I hosted. And he was at that time in talks with Mark Burnett to do a show, but it hadn’t aired yet. That was the only time I ever spoke to him. And it was two to four minutes of nothing. And he kissed me. Hello. I remember that, because I thought, you know, I mean, I don’t know the man.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: This is all theatrics. Right?
Nicolle Wallace: So, his obsession with you over The View appearance is really, as you just said, theatrics.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I think he is very upset that I, a girl who reminds him of all the tough girls in his neighborhood who never fell for his shit or listened to him who knew he was exactly who he is and knew it as when he was a child and apparently a very loathed child that he did not have friends. And if you listen to Mary Trump and what she says about him.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Rosie O’Donnell: And his family dynamic, this is a very wounded person, right? Who I don’t believe ever learn the tenants of compassion, love, empathy, sympathy, who never read a Bible, who lies first and always, you know. There are people who lie compulsively. He’s one of them.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: He believes he can change the reality. And to a large extent, he has. The Mueller report did not exonerate him.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Rosie O’Donnell: The Mueller report found him culpable, but you know, Barr and he and the news never stepped back. Listen, you’re a newscaster, but I got to tell you when they run the U.N. speech.
(BEGIN VT)
Donald Trump: You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed. It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. Let’s see. I can tell you, I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.
(END VT)
Rosie O’Donnell: And they don’t come back and say, that was insane.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: Did you hear what the president did? That’s what we need from the newscasters, but they kick you right out. Terry Moran, Jim Acosta. See you. Wouldn’t want to be you. You dare stand up to the furor. You bet your ass you do. And if you don’t stand up now, we’re going to be like Nazi Germany.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, you’ve led the charge this week over Jimmy Kimmel. You’re one of the people who helped lead the charge. What were the private conversations about people’s fear in standing up for Jimmy Kimmel?
Rosie O’Donnell: I didn’t have any because I just did what I thought was right. I’m not friends with Jimmy in that way. We’ve texted and he texted me thank you. And I texted him back, you know, sue them you’ll win. And you know, I don’t like rally the troops to decide what to say. I follow my gut and my instinct and my research.
You know, listen, I grew up in New York. If you own a restaurant in New York, there’s going to come a time when some guys in bad fitting suits like Sopranos, come in and try to hit you up in the neighborhood for some money. And if you pay them, they own you. And then they start using it as a place to have dinners and not be charged and eat for free. And you go bankrupt. Once Trump said to CBS, you will pay me for this. And they did. They owned CBS and they got rid of Stephen Colbert. And then he said, watch me do this at ABC. And ABC, which would’ve won that case in court capitulates to him. That is just as bad as a mob boss coming into your little Italian family-owned restaurant. That’s who he is. That’s how he works. That’s what he does.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think the country understands that in a way they —
Rosie O’Donnell: No.
Nicolle Wallace: — didn’t understand it two weeks ago?
Rosie O’Donnell: No.
Nicolle Wallace: No?
Rosie O’Donnell: No. I think, you know, ignorance is bliss they say, and some people are unwilling to look at the truth and in their mind I’m a villain. And I understand that. I get it. Okay. And when you’re ready to wake up, we’re going to say welcome back. We’re not going to say screw you. This is all your fault.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think that you’ll come back? Like, do you think it ends? How do you think it ends?
Rosie O’Donnell: Hopefully, you know, when he’s gone and he’s an elderly man. And if your grandfather was that age and came to Thanksgiving, you wouldn’t let him use the electric knife.
Nicolle Wallace: Or walk your dog.
Rosie O’Donnell: And never mind if he said half the things that Trump is saying.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: You would put him in a place to help people who are in dementia. When you watch that U.N. speech in the same way we knew watching Joe Biden at that debate, the man was not cognitively present in the way he used to be. The same is true for Donald Trump. And we have willful blindness in the country. We have people who are unwilling, unable to see him for who he is. And it might be too late to save the nation from him.
It’s hard for me to believe that this uneducated racist buffoon is the president of the United States. And when I talked about him and his misogynistic ways with his Miss Teen Universe contestant, he was a nobody joke on a reality show. And he became the most powerful man in the world. Who would write that in a movie that was believable?
Nicolle Wallace: I said that this week. I said the paper shredders at Netflix are lined with scripts that are less dumb and less obvious than what’s happening in this country. And you and I, I don’t like to say we’re cast as opposites or adversaries, but we argued policies on which there was a presumption. We would always disagree. The threat is so dire that I think you had had left the show, but I was still there when Trump essentially takes over the Republican Party. And I said, he’s an embarrassment to the party I was once in.
I think that the space you’re talking about for people that wake up and say, this isn’t conservatism, this isn’t the Republican Party and this isn’t politics, is so important. And I wonder if that’s at risk too. If you look at how tribal, not just our politics, but our media and our information bubbles have become.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I have to say the fourth estate mainstream media has let down the democracy, the fact that you can’t get into the press pool and the White House anymore.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: The fact that he’s controlling the media and thinks he can.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: The fact that no one is standing up to the idiocy, he’s allowed to sue people for telling the truth and then have the parent company in order to make more money in a merger, placate him. That’s what a president of the United States is able to make billions of dollars while in office and defiance of the Emoluments Clause. This is the president of the United States. And we have to look back at other presidents to see how far we have fallen.
Nicolle Wallace: Let’s pause for a quick moment right here. When we’re back, much more on my conversation with renowned comedian actress, talk show, host an activist, Rosie O’Donnell. Stay right here.
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Nicolle Wallace: You know, your fame and your success is tied into what is now being imported and replicated, I believe by podcasters, right? Your relationship was always with your audience. And I know this from sitting next to you at the table. Your connection was always to the people —
Rosie O’Donnell: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: — sitting in front of us. And you had what I, you know, might never learn. You had a relationship with the camera because you didn’t see a camera. You saw the people at home. And I’ve heard countless stories of men and women who as kids hadn’t come out yet or afraid of their parents. And you were their lifeline. And to this day, they feel bonded to you.
And I wonder how that dynamic, the ability to hold onto each other, to hold each other through the airwaves or through whatever platforms we still control can help us through this moment based on all your success at doing that.
Rosie O’Donnell: Nothing would make me happier, but I don’t profess to be anyone other than a concerned citizen who’s had miraculous things happen to them in their life. Now, some horrible things too, but that’s life, right? We’re 63. We come to learn that. We tried to do the best we could with our kids. I made many mistakes. I see it now at 63, I didn’t maybe see at 40. And you know, we all try to make our way in this world by being a good and honest person and by telling the truth. And that’s the tenants that I live by.
Now I always feel more akin to an audience member than to the celebrity on the stage. So, you know, I remember when Barbara Streisand, I had already met her and, you know, she was as dreamy as I had hoped she would be.
(BEGIN VT)
Rosie O’Donnell: All right. To every boy and girl watching out there, dreams do come true. Please welcome, I knew I would do this, Barbara, Barbara Streisand. In many ways, to me, it feels like my mom walking through the curtain, because I have to say that you were a constant.
Barbara Streisand You’re going to make me cry.
Rosie O’Donnell: I’m sorry. You know, I don’t want to do anything that would upset you in any way, but you were a constant source of light in an often, dark childhood.
(END VT)
Rosie O’Donnell: She could have like ruined my life by like rejecting me. And by her not rejecting me, I kept my boundaries. I have her number. I don’t call her because I don’t want to be, you know, like I want to revere her and the place that she holds in my life and my art is so huge. But one time after all that, she was speaking at the new school, I believe. And I called her assistant and said, I just want to stand in the back. I don’t want to distract. I don’t want to, you know, and they got me a seat behind the cameraman and I wrote her a text and said all is right with the world. I’m once again in the dark watching you shine, because that’s what it was. That’s who I feel I am.
You know, when I think about the people that I know, and I have this young assistant, he’s Parker’s age and he’s Irish, and he says like, one day he comes home and he’s white. And I’m like, what is that, Frankie? He goes, you did a Christmas song with Cher. I’m like, yes, I did. Well, why didn’t you tell me? I’m like, I didn’t know what you want to know.
Nicolle Wallace: I love it.
Rosie O’Donnell: It’s 40 years of chop is right.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: Meeting everyone. I had a dream career and I still do. I get to go and perform this one woman show. I’m going to the Sydney Opera House.
Nicolle Wallace: Awesome.
Rosie O’Donnell: For me to go to Australia. Like, if you —
Nicolle Wallace: That’s a big trip.
Rosie O’Donnell: I was going to say, me going to Miami was the biggest trip before coming to Ireland.
Nicolle Wallace: I remember.
Rosie O’Donnell: That’s it.
Nicolle Wallace: I remember.
Rosie O’Donnell: That’s it. So, this is a stretch I’m telling you I’m stretching in my old age.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s good.
Rosie O’Donnell: But if I ever could be a bomb of any type, B-A-L-M not B-O-M-B.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: Because people think I’m both, you know, incendiary and peaceful, you know. I try to show my real heart more and more as I get older.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: But you know, I have friends who say, there’s not a lot of Rosie O’Donnell than Rosie O’Donnell because I’m not bombastic. I’m not argumentative. I’m not like, but somehow put in that situation, I get indignant and outraged.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: And I can’t believe, like I remember once Whoopi said to me, America was not a racist country.
Nicolle Wallace: I remember that.
Rosie O’Donnell: Do you remember that?
Nicolle Wallace: I was sitting between the two of you.
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes. And I thought my head was going to explode on national TV. I thought, how is it possible that this successful African American woman, one of a dearth of black celebrities that we have in the country could possibly think that, you know? And so, then my heart starts going and that’s why my cardiologist said you had on a shirt that showed your heartbeat. And I am afraid for what happens to you after you had that heart attack. And it does Nicolle. My heart goes. And so, I do meditation and I go to Pilates and I try to get my, you know, calm my soul. And being here has helped, I have to say.
Nicolle Wallace: We do all the things. I heard you go through the list. That’s my list, too. Right? We get up. We brush our teeth. We make the bed. We get sunlight on our, I don’t know, it’s supposed to hit our eyeballs.
Rosie O’Donnell: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: And then we move.
Rosie O’Donnell: Then we move.
Nicolle Wallace: All the things.
Rosie O’Donnell: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: I want to ask you about the one-woman show. And if this was your inspiration from the move or?
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, is creating art different because you took some agency and is there something all of us can glean from that, that in our agency, in whatever power we have to self-preserve, I guess our mental health, we will find power. And that becomes contagious. You’re doing this.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I think that’s true. I didn’t have thought of it till you said it, but I was trying to write a one-woman show based on my mother and mothering. And I tried for a long time, but I could never get it to go. I could never get it to feel right. I could never get to be that vulnerable on a stage just to talk about the feelings of the day she died. And then I came here and something exploded inside of me. Like I had to like step out of my box, you know?
And this is not a celebrity influence culture. If people recognize you, they ignore it. And then maybe when you’re leaving the restaurant, they’ll say welcome to Ireland, Rosie. That’s what you’ll hear. You won’t hear can I have a picture or can I have an autograph? It’s a very respectful culture where they don’t value celebrities more than they value normal people. And I think that’s a beautiful quality for a country, right? Especially in celebrity, obsessed, commercialized corporate America.
Nicolle Wallace: Is that the first time you’ve ever live like that, where people didn’t where you didn’t feel?
Rosie O’Donnell: First time in 40 years. The first time in 40 years, it made me feel like I was in the seventies again, when I brought my child to the school and they all had on different color, solid t-shirts not a uniform. They just didn’t have brands all over their clothes. And they reminded me of my childhood, you know. And one girl said to Clay, I love your fit. And Clay was like, thank you. I wasn’t even trying, you know, and her best friend was born.
But there’s something about this culture and that slowing down of your life that allows you space to feel other things. And when I was in Los Angeles, before I left I was working on a new show for HBO. And I didn’t feel when I got here, that that show was now appropriate. You know, it was really about just raising an autistic kid. And then I got here and I realized, wow, this is so much fuller. I was seeing people who reminded me of me when I was 30, who looked like I looked when I was 10, who are 80 years old like my mother would’ve been, you know. And I see them at the Tesco. We’re a hundred percent Irish. We did 23 in me. It’s at a hundred percent Irish, you know, that’s crazy. And everyone looks familiar and it’s very interesting to live in a culture like that for the first time ever.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think that telling this story and I wonder if you’re comfortable telling, I mean, Barbara Streisand wasn’t just an icon you revered. I mean, that’s tied to this, what you’re talking about with your mother. Will you talk about what she means to you?
Rosie O’Donnell: You know, after my mother died, my father didn’t know what to do. So he took us that summer. She died in March and that summer we went to Ireland and we went to the north of Ireland. Tyrone, not in Belfast, but very close to the border where there were guards and woods. And we were there for the summer. And then we went home and everything of my mothers had been taken out of the house by neighbors and aunts. So, there was one photo of her on the top of the Sears Portrait Studio wall where we put the photos, at the very top was a wedding picture of my mother and father. They left that and they left all her Streisand records because they didn’t know that when we came home from school almost every day, one of them would be playing. And if it wasn’t Barbara Streisand, if it was someone like Simon and Garfunkel, we knew she was in a depression, but when Barbara was on, she was so happy.
So, when I got home, I coveted those records and I used to listen to them every day, lying on the shag rug with big speakers by each year, and trying to wish my mother back to life. So when she came through the curtain on my show, it was as if it was my mother walking through there to me. And I looked in the front row of my four siblings and they were all crying. And then I’m like, I’m not going to be able to get through this, you know. But I will say, Nicolle, that kind of adoration, human to human is hard to take. You know, if somebody meets you and can’t stop crying. And like, what you mean to them is dysregulating them, it’s an overwhelming feeling to be the person in that position. And you know, I’ve been it not in the same capacity of somebody I loved for 40 years, you know, but these kids who come over to me and say, you know, you don’t know you’re my Barbara Streisand. And it breaks my heart. And I also am so moved by it and I see their distress and I like try to assuage it. You know, I try to be like, come on. It’s just me. You know, don’t, it’s just me, you know, but you have an effect on people when you do movies and you’re on TV. And I know that because they all had an effect on me.
Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Rosie O’Donnell continues on the other side of a quick break. We’ll be right back.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think that that pain is part of what makes what’s happening in the country a bigger trauma that you’ve spent your life connecting, trying to connect, making people laugh, the radius of joy that you’ve spent your life doing after such a profound early loss. Where do you put the pain, because so many people are numb to it? So many people do. I mean, Gavin Newsom was talking about this, basically telling everyone to wake the fuck up. Is your inability to just numb out part of the pain that you knew so young?
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes. It’s my inability. And you know, my shrink has said more than once. Most people have a window with a window pain and a screen and shutters and curtains, and your window is open. You have no way to filter out the painful stuff. Most people have all those protections. And so, they don’t get to absorb it all, but it hits me like a bullet. And my mother was dying. That was a world tragedy for me. And at the same time Saigon was falling. And my neighbor, Charlie Kasik (ph) had been shot in Vietnam. And I knew him and his sister and his mother. And it was very alive for me having to watch it on TV and see the horrors of the Saigon evacuation when my mother had just died.
So, world events, Nicolle, trigger me in a major way. And I know this about me. I know it when Columbine happened, I went on medication for the first time. Thank God I was on it when 9/11 happened. Thank God I was on it still when Katrina happened. I’ve never gone off. I tried once when I was feeling particularly good and tried down with my doctor. And on the fourth day I was in bed sobbing and couldn’t get up. And I said, if I ever tell you I want to go off these again, I want you to read this note to me. And I wrote a note to myself. You are feeling so bad right now. You can’t imagine reasons for living. Don’t do this again. And I have it.
So, I know that I need help managing big feelings. And when the world falls apart, I become incapacitated. So I knew this was going to happen in America. I needed the distance. I needed some time to process all of it without having to be a public figure who would get stopped at the airport or going out to dinner. Not that I go out to dinner a lot. But because I am a homebody. I will order in, I will order in.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: But, yes. So, I think that world tragedies slay me and I need to protect myself from them.
Nicolle Wallace: I wish I knew this about you because I think, you know, we were four women sort of thrust onto The View in a weird process. I remember walking into my test and you and Whoopi were the pillars and then Rosie Perez, and they were sort of casting about for a Republican to fight with the three of you.
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Nicolle Wallace: So, I am a Republican. We should get that out the way. Right.
Rosie O’Donnell: And really like her. I do. I actually love her.
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Nicolle Wallace: It makes me cry thinking that we were handed hot topics, right, on note cards to fight about. And I think as I’ve aged, I feel the same way. I think everything matters. And I think in this moment, I don’t think that nothing matters. I think everything matters. I think every tweet, I think every block that I’m able to do in my two-hour show might be the one story the one thing that makes a difference. And so, I really take to heart your criticism of the media. And I wonder what else you think we can do, I can do.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, you know, the reason that Whoopi and I both said, her, you, was because you’re the smartest. And that’s what you need when talking about serious issues, really smart people to debate the rights and wrongs. We need to make each other think and make each other, not who could be the loudest or who could recite the most accurate Republican talking points who had their own point of view and who had their own skin in the game. Right?
So when you see somebody with that, there’s no choice as to who you would want to do that with. But you know, I think that the placating of him and allowing him to dictate what the news cycle is, has to stop.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: And they need to all band together of mainstream media and say, we will not post his lies without comment anymore. They put him in a press conference talking about Tylenol and autism. It would seem that he’s not an expert and to denigrate women and mothers and call them responsible for taking a headache pain killer is beyond irresponsible. It’s misogynistic. It’s unbelievable. And everyone let that go by without saying this is pure bullshit. And every time that you don’t comment on the insanity that he’s showing every day, the deeper we are in.
So, every journalist of reason and of dignity needs to make a commitment to never placate him again. And if that means don’t run his stories on the news, then don’t. Report the facts he lied today. He went crazy at the U.N. He is a national embarrassment. They have to say the truth, you know, because that John Mayer song, when you trust your television, what you get is what you got because when they own the information, they can bend it all they want. And that’s what’s happened to the United States and the fourth estate.
And there are so many people who changed the world. Walter Cronkite said, we can’t win this war. And that war was ended. Now it wasn’t as simple as one nightly broadcast, but it started the revolution that ended our involvement in that horrific war.
And people saying, I’m canceling my trip to Disney. I’m canceling my Hulu, my Disney+, $4 billion in four days. Bravo, America. And this is how much power we have. And don’t let them tell you we don’t. So, target is knowing when you sidled up to a dictator, you’re not going to have public support because they are the minority. The people that want fascism, the bigots, the racists are the minority. Most Americans, most Republicans are good people. They’re not the horrors that protect pedophiles.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you surprised that it’s the Jeffrey Epstein scandal?
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: The most sinister, dark monstrous things done by a rich monstrous man that has made the MAGA movement, even the people wholly devoted to Donald Trump question him.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I would hope to God that the line in the sand is raping young girls. And to find out that maybe it’s not is devastating is devastating and you can ignore it. I don’t know, Nicolle, I don’t know one sexual abuser that I’m friends with. He didn’t write that card for Epstein’s birthday. This man is a danger to all the world and it is our responsibility to get him out of office.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you like, who in the Democratic Party speaks in a way that you think matches the moment?
Rosie O’Donnell: Jasmine Crockett.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. She’s awesome.
Rosie O’Donnell: AOC. It’s the women who are going to save us and probably the women of color because they always bail out the Democrats.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you advise people in this country who want to not just, you know, take your messages and circulate them, but want to engage in activism? I interviewed Joan Baez last week and she said, it’s scarier than it was in the sixties.
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s more dangerous now. So, I don’t tell people to go to the streets because you know, everyone has to make their own calculations about risk.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, I think find your community. So, if you’re afraid to go to a protest and you have every right to be afraid to go to a protest, find out the people in your town who think like you and have a potluck dinner once a month, once every other week, have every other Sunday them come over to a different person’s house and just talk and foreign community. And what are you doing? And what am I doing? Like there’s so many things you could do, but you need to surround yourself with community because people feeling that they’re the only ones saying this or thinking this or, oh, Rosie, you’re so brave. I’m not so brave. Look what I’ve been given in my life from this country. I owe this country my loyalty. I owe this country the best of me to help, to try to save it from the forces of evil that we’ve worked against for these 200 some years. We’ve worked against to get the equal rights, you know, for people to have the Civil Rights Act, all we’ve done to help gay people.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Rosie O’Donnell: And they’re vilifying trans people, the minority of the minority of gay people.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you scared for your own safety and your own citizenship?
Rosie O’Donnell: No. No, he can’t take away my citizenship and if he can, that’s the end of America and I wouldn’t need it anyway. I’m in the process of getting my Irish citizenship because my grandparents are from here and you have birthright citizenship if that’s the truth. And I would be, you know, sad if he would take away my citizenship. But it would also mean the America that I knew and loved is gone because no president has the right to do that. And we have the Constitution, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why our country runs and works because of the Constitution and he’s disobeying it. And you know, he doesn’t care about the laws and he does what he wants.
Nicolle Wallace: What’s your sort of final thought about anyone who thinks they can wait this out? This might surprise you as an ex-Republican, but I’m totally gobsmacked that business leaders are on the sidelines. Like, we’ll see how this goes. Democracy made us rich, but you know, autocracy would work too. No, it doesn’t.
Rosie O’Donnell: No, it doesn’t.
Nicolle Wallace: It doesn’t work.
Rosie O’Donnell: No.
Nicolle Wallace: There is no thriving economy in an autocracy. And so, I wonder what makes them think we can ride this out. It’s getting more severe by the day, by the hour.
Rosie O’Donnell: Well, listen, it really is scary, but find community. That’s what I would say. Find community of like-minded people, stick together, take care of each other, hide each other if you need to. Would you have hidden Anne Frank in your attic? Would you have taken that risk? You pray to God, you would be.
I remember those photos of the civil rights movement and these white people sitting next to black people at the ice cream shop and getting ice cream poured all over them. And people spitting at them. And I just always thought to myself when I saw that as a little girl, I want to be one of those white people sitting there next to them so that they are not alone.
You know, there’s a Tori Amos lyric that moves me so much. And it goes, your mom showed up in a nasty dress. And it’s your turn now to stand where I stand. Everyone is looking at you, take a hold of my hand. And I just think those are lyrics to live by for me, right? When people are being dehumanized, be a human being and stand next to them and hold their hand through it and suffer what they suffer. And that’s empathy. And that’s more valuable than compassion or sympathy. That’s empathy.
Nicolle Wallace: Rosie O’Donnell, you are one of one. It’s an honor to know you.
Rosie O’Donnell: Same back at you, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: And to call you my friend and that flight to Miami that changed everything.
Rosie O’Donnell: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And I just want to say, I love you and I love knowing you and I love your voice and I love everything you say.
Rosie O’Donnell: Back at you. I love you too, Nicolle. And I’m very glad that we became friends.
Nicolle Wallace: Me too. Thank you, my friend. Thank you so much for your time today.
Rosie O’Donnell: Thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you.
Rosie O’Donnell: All right, I’ll see you soon.
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Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much for listening to The Best People. You can subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcast ad free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get early access and exclusive bonus content. All episodes of the podcast are also available on YouTube. Visit msnbc.com/thebestpeople to watch.
The Best People is produced by Vicki Vergolina and our senior producer Lisa Ferri. Our associate producer is Ranna Shahbazi. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Burkey is the senior executive producer of Deadline White House. Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio, and Madeleine Haeringer is the senior vice president in charge of audio, digital and long form.
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