Rosie O'Donnell quietly slipped back into the United States for a two-week visit — more than a year after she packed up and moved to Ireland because Donald Trump won re-election. She told almost no one.
Fox News reported that the 63-year-old actress disclosed the covert homecoming during an interview on SiriusXM's Cuomo Mornings, where she told Chris Cuomo she wanted to test the waters before potentially bringing her teenage daughter back for a visit.
"I was recently home for two weeks, and I did not really tell anyone. I just went to see my family. 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. I wanted to hold my children again. And I hadn't been home in over a year."
She wanted to see how hard it would be to get in and out of the country. An American citizen, born in New York, returning to the United States — and she treated it like a reconnaissance mission.
O'Donnell moved to Ireland with her teenage daughter in January 2025, just before Trump's second inauguration. She framed it as survival — not protest, not politics, but existential necessity. She claims she doesn't regret leaving and that she did "what I needed to do to save myself, my child, and my sanity."
But here she is, sneaking back for two weeks to hug her other kids and gauge whether America is still habitable. The dramatic collapse under their own weight. If the country were genuinely dangerous for Rosie O'Donnell, she wouldn't have waltzed through customs without incident. If it weren't, then the original departure was exactly what it looked like — a tantrum dressed up as moral courage.
O'Donnell told Cuomo that being in Ireland changed her perspective on America:
"I've been in a place where celebrity worship does not exist. I've been in a place where there's more balance to the news. There's more balance to life. It's not everyone trying to get more, more, more. It's a very different culture. And I felt the United States in a completely different way than I ever had before I left."
A celebrity complaining about celebrity worship while conducting a media tour about her feelings. The irony writes itself.
O'Donnell's assessment of her brief visit home was bleak, at least by her telling:
"And I'm very happy that I'm not in the midst of it there because the energy that I felt while in the United States was — if I could use the most simple word I can think of — it was scary. There's a feeling that something is really wrong, and no one is doing anything about it."
This is a woman who left a country of 330 million people, relocated to the west coast of Europe, traveled to London for a performance of "Evita" in July, posed in front of the Sydney Opera House in October, and now sits for interviews about how terrified she is of America — while freely entering and leaving it at will.
The word "scary" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for someone whose experience was an uneventful two-week family visit.
O'Donnell has said her daughter blames Trump for forcing their family's move out of America, though she hasn't offered specifics about what exactly made the move necessary beyond her own political distress. No threats. No legal jeopardy. No concrete danger. Just vibes — and the conviction that the wrong person occupying the Oval Office constitutes a personal emergency.
Millions of Americans lived through eight years of Obama and four years of Biden without relocating to another hemisphere. They went to work. They raised their kids. They voted in the next election. That's what citizens of a republic do.
The bad blood between O'Donnell and Trump stretches back roughly 20 years, to when she criticized him while appearing on "The View." They've traded jabs ever since. Trump escalated the exchange in his characteristically unsubtle fashion, posting on Truth Social in July 2025:
"Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"
He followed up in September 2025:
"She is not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so!"
O'Donnell fired back, correctly noting that a president cannot strip citizenship from a natural-born citizen under the Constitution:
"He can't do that because it's against the Constitution, and even the Supreme Court has not given him the right to do that. ... He's not allowed to do that. The only way you're allowed to take away someone's citizenship is if they renounce it themselves, and I will never renounce my American citizenship. I am a very proud citizen of the United States."
She's right on the law — citizenship for those born in the country is protected by the 14th Amendment, and no formal action was ever taken. No executive order, no legal proceeding. This was a social media feud between two people who've been feuding since the mid-2000s.
O'Donnell also told an Irish radio show that Trump "uses me as a punching bag and a way to sort of rile his base." That may well be true. It's also true that she has spent the better part of two decades volunteering for the role.
O'Donnell shared with the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph in October 2025 that she was applying for Irish citizenship — dual citizenship, she clarified, so she could remain an American while living abroad. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to Fox News Digital with a four-word review:
"What great news for America!"
O'Donnell insists she loves Ireland — its politics, its people, its pace of life:
"I am also getting my citizenship here so I can have dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States because I enjoy living here. It's very peaceful. I love the politics of the country. I love the people and their generous hearts and spirit. And it's been very good for my daughter. But I still want to maintain my citizenship in the United States. My children are there. I will be there visiting and go to see them. And I have the freedom to do that, as does every American citizen."
Note what's happening here. She left America because she couldn't bear to live under Trump. She's applying for Irish citizenship because Ireland is peaceful and balanced. But she also insists she's a proud American who will never renounce her citizenship and will visit whenever she pleases.
This isn't exile. It's a vacation with a narrative.
Every four or eight years, a certain class of celebrity threatens to leave the country if the Republican wins. In 2016, the promises flowed freely. Almost none followed through. O'Donnell, to her credit, actually left — which puts her ahead of the pack on commitment, if nothing else.
But the move reveals something the cultural left never quite reckons with. Their attachment to America is conditional. It depends on who holds power.
When their side governs, the country is worth fighting for. When it doesn't, the country becomes unbearable — not because anything in their daily life has materially changed, but because the symbolism is wrong.
O'Donnell wasn't deported. She wasn't charged. She wasn't harassed at the border. She entered the United States, spent two weeks with her children, and left again without incident. The America she describes as "scary" welcomed her home and let her go, because that's what free countries do.
She'll be back. The question was never whether she'd return — it was how long she could sustain the performance.
