Rosie O’Donnell told Chris Cuomo Friday that she does not regret leaving America to live in Ireland, telling the SiriusXM host, “I did what I needed to do to save myself, my child and my sanity.”
O’Donnell’s appearance on “Cuomo Mornings” comes nearly a year after the comedian, actress and former talk show host announced in March 2025 that she had moved to Ireland in the wake of President Trump’s second inauguration earlier that year. In a TikTok video explaining her decision, O’Donnell said she was in the midst of attempting to obtain Irish citizenship.
Speaking with O’Donnell, Cuomo asked her if she still feels “good” with her decision to leave America and what she thinks of “what we’re dealing with back home.” In response, O’Donnell revealed that she recently spent two weeks back in the States visiting some of her family.
“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,” O’Donnell said. “So I was in New York for the last two weeks, and I have to tell you, it feels like a very different country, a very different place to me.”
“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,” O’Donnell continued. “I felt the United States in a completely different way than I ever had before I left.”
“I don’t regret leaving at all,” she concluded. “I think I did what I needed to do to save myself, my child and my sanity. 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.”
In July 2025, months after O’Donnell announced her move, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was considering revoking her U.S. citizenship. Trump called her a “Threat to Humanity” and wrote that O’Donnell “should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her.”
O’Donnell responded to Trump with several Instagram posts of her own, in which she called him a “dangerous old soulless man with dementia who lacks empathy compassion and basic humanity.”
