Comedian Rosie O’Donnell was one of the celebrities who decided to leave the U.S. when Donald Trump was sworn in as president for his second term. An outspoken critic of the president, O’Donnell said she left to protect herself, her child and her sanity.
O’Donnell has never discussed returning to America. But a recent AI-generated post featuring her image claimed she would appear on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. The post showed her with curly hair in a green sequin dress on the show’s ballroom floor. Sharing it on Instagram on April 13, O’Donnell wrote: “This made me laugh. Reminds me to never get a perm!!! Completely untrue but funny.”
O’Donnell has a documented feud with Trump, who, according to People, had once threatened to revoke her U.S. citizenship and called her a “threat to humanity” and better off in Ireland. She replied that such threats were why she left, adding: “The president of the USA has always hated the fact that I see him for who he is — a criminal con man, sexually abusive liar out to harm our nation to serve himself.”
However, she recently returned for a low-key trip to visit family, and the AI post appeared afterward. On Chris Cuomo’s radio show, Cuomo Mornings, she said she had “gone home for two weeks and I did not really tell anyone. I just went to see my family.” She added, “I wanted to see how hard it would be for me to get in and out of the country. I wanted to feel what it felt like.”
The mother of five said she also missed her kids: “I wanted to hold my children again, and I hadn’t been home in over a year. I also wanted to make sure that it was safe for me before I brought my daughter this summer, where we plan to spend the summer off from her schooling here with my family.”
She described the visit as “scary,” saying it felt like “something is really wrong and no one is doing anything about it.” That reinforced her lack of regret: “I don’t regret leaving at all. I think I did what I needed to do to save myself, my child and my sanity.” O’Donnell has voiced concerns about LGBTQ+ rights since Trump’s second term began, fearing for her nonbinary child, Clay.
Her fears are not unfounded: The Trump administration has negatively affected LGBTQ+, transgender and minority communities. But in a recent development, it revoked plans to remove the Pride flag from the Stonewall Monument—a victory for the queer community.