Rosie O'Donnell, the actress who announced she was leaving the United States for Ireland to escape the Trump presidency, sat for an interview last week, from New York, and declared that President Donald Trump is "one of the most mediocre men ever in public office" and must be removed.
The 64-year-old made the remarks during a conversation with author Marianne Williamson, Breitbart News reported. The interview covered O'Donnell's views on Trump's fitness for office, the state of American democracy, and her own decision to leave the country, a decision she has apparently reversed, quietly, on multiple occasions.
That last detail is worth sitting with. O'Donnell fled to Ireland early last year. She told the public she was done. And yet she keeps turning up stateside, posting a stream of TikTok videos about the president she claims to have left behind.
O'Donnell did not hold back. She told Williamson that Americans are irrationally intimidated by the president:
"People are inexplicably afraid of him and his 'power,' but he is one of the most mediocre men ever in public office."
She then escalated, asserting that Trump's physical condition demands his removal:
"And he is, right now, so addled by his physical form that we have to remove him. Period."
What mechanism she envisions for that removal went unspecified. She cited no legal process, no constitutional provision, no political strategy. Just the word "period."
O'Donnell also claimed that Trump's allies are covering for him, describing a scene in which associates pretend not to notice him sleeping during a government meeting. She offered no evidence for the claim, no date, no meeting name, no corroborating witness.
"And the fact that one mediocre man can take down this amazing nation with a group of sycophants behind him who will pretend he's not sleeping during a government meeting while standing 12 in from his face."
Williamson agreed, adding her own assessment of the president's supporters.
"It's unbelievable, the people who have really sold their souls."
O'Donnell framed her departure from the United States as a matter of survival. She told Williamson she chose Ireland to protect her family and her mental health.
"I don't want to have the stress and anxiety associated with the constant barrage of him. But I have moved to Ireland, and that was my choice in order to keep my family and my sanity safe."
The trouble with this narrative is geography. O'Donnell made these statements while sitting in New York. Breitbart reported that she has quietly returned to the United States on multiple occasions after vowing she would not. She has also previously claimed she stopped watching the news after leaving, a claim that sits awkwardly next to what Breitbart described as a constant stream of TikTok posts about the president.
O'Donnell has a long history of offering political commentary from her self-described Irish exile, weighing in on Washington scandals with the regularity of someone who never left.
The pattern is familiar. Announce a dramatic exit. Return quietly. Continue the commentary as if nothing changed. The audience is expected not to notice.
This is not O'Donnell's first time making incendiary statements about the president. Breitbart noted that she previously claimed Trump would use "an assassination attempt or terrorist bombing" to cancel the midterm elections, a claim published in a linked report dated June 20, 2026, apparently drawn from the same conversation with Williamson.
That accusation, that a sitting president would stage or exploit a violent attack to cancel elections, is extraordinary. O'Donnell offered no evidence for it.
She has also dismissed a reported assassination attempt on Trump as a hoax, even after reports of an armed attacker and Secret Service gunfire. The willingness to float conspiracy theories about violence against a president, while simultaneously accusing that president of authoritarianism, reveals a pattern of contradiction that would embarrass a less committed partisan.
O'Donnell wrapped her attacks in the language of the founding fathers. She told Williamson that America was built on freedom and democracy and has been "a beacon of light across the world."
"Our founding fathers said: This is for all of us. This is freedom and democracy."
"In my lifetime, in your lifetime, Marianne, this has been a beacon of light across the world: the United States. And, now, the underbelly is showing."
This is a common move in progressive celebrity politics: invoke democratic principles while calling for the removal of a democratically elected president without specifying a democratic process for doing so. O'Donnell said Trump must go. She did not say "vote him out." She did not say "impeach him." She said "remove him. Period."
The founding fathers she cited designed a system of elections, impeachment, and constitutional amendment, not celebrity proclamations from a New York living room. If O'Donnell believes the president is unfit, the Constitution provides remedies. Vague demands for removal, unanchored to any legal or electoral mechanism, are not among them.
O'Donnell's personal life has also drawn public attention in recent months. She has spoken publicly about visiting her daughter Chelsea behind bars following drug convictions, a reminder that the consequences of policy failures and personal hardship are not abstract for anyone, including outspoken celebrities.
O'Donnell is not the first entertainer to promise to leave the country over a presidential election. She is not the first to break that promise. And she is not the first to continue issuing political commentary from a position of wealth and comfort while claiming to speak for ordinary Americans.
What makes her case notable is the sheer volume of contradictions packed into a single interview. She says she left the country, but she's in New York. She says she stopped watching the news, but she posts about Trump on TikTok constantly. She says Trump is "mediocre", but she has organized her entire public identity around opposing him. She invokes the founders, but cannot name a constitutional mechanism for the action she demands.
Williamson, for her part, offered little more than agreement. Her contribution, that Trump's allies have "sold their souls", is the kind of moral language that sounds weighty until you notice it carries no specific charge, no factual claim, and no accountability for the person saying it.
The interview raises questions it does not answer. What evidence does O'Donnell have that Trump slept during a government meeting? What does "remove him" mean in practice? Why does she continue to return to a country she publicly abandoned? And why does anyone treat the political analysis of a celebrity who cannot keep her own story straight as newsworthy?
These are not rhetorical questions. They are gaps in a public argument that O'Donnell has chosen to make repeatedly, loudly, and without apparent concern for consistency.
The American public elected Donald Trump. They did so through the constitutional process O'Donnell claims to revere. If she wants him gone, the ballot box is right where she left it, assuming she's in the country long enough to use it.
