December 15 2025, 08:15 
In January, gay comedian Rosie O’Donnell pulled up stakes and moved to Ireland. She was looking to escape the mental jail in which Donald Trump locked her during his first term in office, and where he threatened to put her again in his second, along with deporting her.
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Now she says she’s loving her life in a Georgian farmhouse near Dublin, the Washington Post reports, enjoying walks around town like a civilian, and thankful that her nonbinary kid —one of five adopted children — is thriving. She’s even got work lined up on Irish television.
But how is she really doing?
Apparently fine, apart from the continuing obsession with Trump that took her to Ireland in the first place.
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That’s something she’s still working on with her therapist, she says. A 20-year feud between tri-borough rivals must be hard to shake.
O’Donnell and
They finally came to blows in 2006, when O’Donnell traded her “Queen of Nice” persona for liberal attack dog in her first outing as a host on The View. Trump was a ratings hit by then on The Apprentice, and gaudy, easy prey for O’Donnell, who mocked his hair, called him bankrupt, and compared him to “snake oil salesmen.”
“Left the first wife, had an affair; left the second wife, had an affair. Had kids both times, but he’s the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America,” she said, referring to his reportedly smarmy behavior with contestants in the Miss Universe Pageant, which he then owned.
“Donald, sit and spin, my friend,” she advised him.
The very same day on Entertainment Tonight, Trump responded, “Rosie O’Donnell is disgusting, I mean both inside and out. Take a look at her, she’s a slob. She talks like a truck driver.”
It’s been downhill ever since — depending on how you look at it.
It’s been all upside for Trump, who thrives on conflict and milked their rivalry as his political career went into overdrive.
O’Donnell stayed relevant amid the ugly back-and-forth as her own career slowed.
But O’Donnell has a heart and a soul buried under her tough exterior. So, fearing the worst when he was elected to a second term, she fled to the home of her paternal grandparents, seeking safety, distance, and relief from the orange specter haunting her.
She’s checked two of those boxes on the Emerald Isle.
O’Donnell loves being able to head down to the local pub unaccosted, unlike life in the States as an “approachable” celebrity.
People may say hello — or “I hate him, too!” as one neighbor recently blurted — but they’re respectful and easy going.
Now, O’Donnell says, she is, too.
She recounted a long conversation with a young couple canoodling their baby on a recent visit to the pub. Hours in, the pair finally admitted they knew who she was.
“You’re big fans, and you didn’t tell me for two hours?” she laughed, recollecting the moment.
Yet even an ocean away, the brash developer from the 90s is still living in her head, rent-free.
He’s in the news, on her phone, and in her mind, just like he was in his first term when she sketched more than 200 portraits of him on her iPad with titles like “The Moron” and “Loser” and “Liar.”
In July, Trump gleefully posted an unflattering pic of O’Donnell with a threat to take away the ex-pat’s citizenship.
She is “incapable… of being a great American,” he declared.
“You are everything that is wrong with America,” she wrote in reply, “and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it.”
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