Ellen DeGeneres doesn’t want President Donald Trump to come on her talk show.
In an interview with the daytime talk show host on Friday, “Today” host Matt Lauer asked DeGeneres if she’d ever met or known the president, and if she’d be willing to have him on her show.
“Um,” DeGeneres said, hesitating for a moment to think about her answer before responding simply, “no.”
“I’m not going to change his mind,” she explained. “He’s against everything that I stand for. We need to look at someone else who looks different than us and believes in something that we don’t believe in and still accept them and let them have their rights.”
In the interview, which took place on the set of DeGeneres’ show and in front of her studio audience, the pair also looked back on the landmark episode of her ’90s sitcom in which the comedian came out to the world in a dramatic fashion.
“It was a big deal,” she said. “I look back on it now and I wish I would have done it sooner. I wish I hadn’t waited so long.”
But, like most trailblazing moments in history, DeGeneres’ decision to come out on national television had consequences, not the least of which being the death threats from angry viewers. In a reunion celebrating the 20th anniversary of “The Puppy Episode” last week, guest star Oprah Winfrey said she received racist hate mail for appearing in it.
Laura Dern revealed that she received no other offers for a year after her guest starring turn.
“The biggest thing though was that I lost my career,” DeGeneres told Lauer. “For three years, I couldn’t work and was not offered one thing. I was running out of money and didn’t know I was going to work again. I was 45 years old and was like, ‘This doesn’t look good.’”
“I was angry at first and then just thought, ‘I’ve got to do something about this,’” she said. “And so I started writing standup again.”