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"Unleashing Hope" Rosie O'Donnell's Powerful Discussion on Autism Service Dogs | Jim Acosta Fan Favorite
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- [00:03]
Jim Acosta
All right, welcome, everybody, to the Jim Acosta Show. And as you can see, it is Rosie o' DONNELL Day on the Jim Acosta Show. Rosie, how are you? Great to see you.
- [00:12]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I am wonderful. And I'm a huge fan of yours and a big supporter and reached out when you did such a brave thing that you did over there at your job. And I was very moved and inspired and I want everyone to know that and you to know that. And that's why I sent you that little note.
- [00:28]
Jim Acosta
I appreciate it. It really, it warmed my heart. It was just the shot in the arm that I needed. And you've inspired me with this new documentary that you're doing, Unleashing Hope, the Power of Service Dogs for Children With Autism. It's out on Hulu. It's about how dogs can help children with autism. And it is just so beautiful. And I want to talk to you about all of this because there's a lot of news going on here in the States. But I guess we just get this out of the way and somebody's asking this question right now. Did you move to Ireland? You're in Ireland right now. You're in Dublin?
- [00:59]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I am. I'm in Dublin, Ireland. I read Project 2025, which I assumed all Americans would do and was surprised to find out that many people did not. Once I read that, I made a plan to leave should he win. And that plan was executed on the day in November that he won, she said, raising her eyebrows. And I made the plan and we were out by the 15th. My plan was to be out before he was inaugurated. And I have relatives, my grandparents are from iow, so I have birthright citizenship options here. And it was the only country I considered coming to. And I took my little 12 year old non binary autistic child and we showed up. I have two cousins here. They've been wonderful. And it's been a glorious transition. I have to say, Jim, I was not one of those celebrities who said, I will leave if he gets. I never imagined leaving the United States. I didn't even travel very much. You know, I didn't.
- [02:00]
Jim Acosta
Did you think about this beforehand and say, okay, if he wins, I'm going to do this? Yes, because you just kind of kept it to yourself.
- [02:07]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, I kept it to myself. I talked to my therapist about it. I talked to my family, my grown children, and I told them and all my friends and family said, oh, you'll never do it. Because I'm someone who, like, if someone says to me, I got tickets to The Riviera in Italy and we can go. And I'm like, you know, Miami's nice. You know, I'm not one of those. It's, yeah, kind of far. And I, I'm not a big traveler. I'm not a big like leave the United States person. So it surprised all of them and it kind of surprised me. But I was certain there was not a moment's hesitation. When I read Project 2025, when the Supreme Court said that he had presidential immunity, I knew that we were on the verge of fascism in America. And even though that was unimaginable to most 63 year olds like me, I knew that's where we were going. I have no doubt about his level of cruelty. I have no illusions about him having a heart. I know him deeply and personally. Although I've never spoken to the man, I know him from how he's treated me over the last 18 years.
- [03:15]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, he's obsessed.
- [03:16]
Rosie O'Donnell
When he was not the pregnant with you. Yes, he does. He does seem to be obsessed.
- [03:20]
Jim Acosta
And what is that? Do we know what that's about? It's because you've criticized him in the past.
- [03:24]
Rosie O'Donnell
I mean, you know, he had Miss America pageant, Miss Teen America, this Tara o' Connor, I believe her name was, and she was in the Village, she kissed a girl, she was drunk and the Post printed it. And he, right before the View was live, had a press conference to make her publicly apologize. And it looked to me a lot like a pimp and a prostitute. And I said that on the View. And then I proceeded to tell factual, accurate information about his bankruptcies, about how he was not a self made man. I told facts that anyone could have googled and found out and he went batshit crazy. He went on every single show. I went to a sports bar with my children who were very little at the time.
- [04:09]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [04:10]
Rosie O'Donnell
Because I thought, well, at a sports bar we could get them grilled cheese and chicken nuggets. And he wouldn't. He was on a sports show talking about what a horrible person I am, a degenerate. Every word he could use for gay. That was not. I remember that, yes. Calling me fat and disgusting, misogynist, homophobic, every way he could. And he did it for 18 years.
- [04:33]
Jim Acosta
And it says more about him than anything else. I mean that the fact that he said all those ugly things back in the day and the fact that he remains obsessed with you, it says to me that you got his goat as, as we used to.
- [04:45]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, you know, I grew up in New York and I remember when his planes were repossessed off the runways at LaGuardia. I remember when they put out the documentary and he was talking about how poor he was. I remember the stories of him pretending to date Madonna, of him calling people and pretending to be his own publicist, lying about his book sales being number one. The man lies chronically. Chronically, like, like a teenage boy.
- [05:10]
Jim Acosta
Well, and I say this all the time, that New Yorkers know him better than anybody. They're the least surprised people in the world. Whenever you talk to people from New York who've been in New York for a long time about Donald Trump, they just roll their eyes and they say, I've known about this since the 80s or whatever.
- [05:24]
Rosie O'Donnell
I mean, yes, the same with me. I grew up knowing about that. This man was the laughing stock of New York and no one took him seriously. I would never have him on my show. And he asked over and over. And finally we did a thing where Listerine was paying money for everybody who would come on and sweep. All they didn't get to talk to me. All they did was enter through the curtain and sweep the floor and they would pay us $1,000 to charity for everybody who was sweeping. Well, one day I let him come on the show to be a sweeper, and that was the only time he was ever on my program. And he was mad at me because of that as well. But he, he was never a man of any merit that I wanted to waste time to speak to. And I think that gets his goat in a manner that he doesn't know how to deal with.
- [06:13]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. And. But he's somehow gotten back in the White House. I mean, I think I read that you have a big problem with the show the Apprentice. And I do think you're right, that it did sell people a bill of goods and it portrayed something about him that just doesn't exist.
- [06:31]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, listen, it was pure fiction, Jim. It was pure fiction to say that this made was a business giant when he had been bankrupt six times. To say he was a self made millionaire when he got all his money from his daddy, to say that he was some moral authority when he had all these affairs on all of these wives and all of these sexual abuse charges. It was like Mark Burnett, the producer of the Apprentice, taught him how to take a lie, say it long enough and make it the truth. He had a little family owned grifter business in New York. He was a logo slapper. He didn't build building. He slapped his name on buildings that other people built. And usually they were not very high quality buildings either.
- [07:14]
Jim Acosta
That's true.
- [07:15]
Rosie O'Donnell
And so if you grew up in New York, all of these facts were available to you and daily you would get them in the newspaper. So it wasn't a surprise.
- [07:25]
Jim Acosta
And I remember when I covered them during the campaign in 2016, I would go into Trump Tower. It was the first time I had ever gone into Trump Tower. And I was like, oh, this is going to be good. And I go in there and I'm like, oh, why is this place such a dump? Why does it look so shitty? Like the gold plating and stuff was kind of faded. And you would go down to the men's room and it was like, wow, this is kind of like Penn Station. I mean, it's not that.
- [07:48]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, well, he has no taste. He is very gaudy. He thinks that gold lame will fool people. And you know, he would probably sell it as gold if he had a chance. His stakes went out of business. I remember I had, somebody gave me. He had some liquor company at one point and somebody gave me a bottle, closed bottle of his liquor with two bugs in it, like there were two dead flies in it in a sealed bottle of liquor. And I kept it on the counter for many, many years. But you know, this man has failed at almost everything he's ever tried. And to think that so many people believe the lie that Mark Burnett told over and over. Mark Burnett, not born in this country. Mark Burnett, who made a lot of money off of this. I always said, does he have a conscience? Does he feel any remorse over what he let loose on our nation?
- [08:45]
Jim Acosta
And it's still letting loose. And he's put incredibly irresponsible people in some very important positions. I know because of the issue of autism being near and dear to your heart, we have to talk about RFK Jr. And this is just being reported today. CBS News reporting today the National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his effort to study autism. And it will allow external researchers pick for Kennedy's autism studies to study comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of the U.S. population for the first time. I mean, it just seems like an incredible invasion of privacy to go on this wild goose chase chasing after his conspiracy theories.
- [09:29]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, and we cannot forget that the Nazis first came after the disabled people and they had to compile a list before they did that. And who the hell is RFK Jr to tell people who is a worthy human being and who is not, who does he think he is saying the first credit against them was the first complaint he had against them? They will never pay taxes. They will never go to the bathroom unassisted. So some woman who's taking care of her autistic child, who helps the child in the bathroom, as millions of Americans help people they love every day in ways that maybe are not the most appealing to other people. They do it because they love their family members, and their value is in their innate being, not in how well they pay taxes or use the bathroom. And I think the fact that the Kennedy family created the Special Olympics, and here is this rogue Kennedy, this embarrassment to the rest of the family, going about with, first of all, that he tried to get into Kamala's cabinet, and she said, oh, no, no, no, no. And then he went over to the enemy side and kissed the golden piece of turd. I could not believe it. And I can't believe what he's allowed to get away with. And I can't believe that the public is not calling for his firing immediately.
- [10:54]
Jim Acosta
Well, and I think part of it is because, you know, you have Signalgate and Pete Hegseth, you know, and that's just been a daily embarrassment over at the Pentagon. But I consider what's happening over at HHS and in our public health sector with RFK Jr. S leadership perhaps to be the most critical emergency that this country faces right now. You have.
- [11:13]
Rosie O'Donnell
I agree with you 100% in West Texas.
- [11:16]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [11:16]
Rosie O'Donnell
And his lies about vaccines and all of that is responsible for the outbreak of measles. And who is he? He is not a medical expert. He is not a doctor. Who does he think he is? It boggles my mind, his hubris. It boggles my mind, his ego. How does he think he has the right. Because his last name is a Kennedy and he has none of the qualities of his father or his uncle, none of Caroline or JFK Jr. He has none of Ted Kennedy. He's like this rogue Kennedy who has gotten away with being a horrible spokesperson for the American people. And how dare he? How dare he? I hope, honestly, Jim, that I never have to see him because I was friendly and used to play poker with his wife. And I asked her, before he went to the Trump side, how did it feel to marry a Kennedy? That must have been pretty trippy for you. And I got to know her and felt.
- [12:14]
Jim Acosta
This is Cheryl Hines.
- [12:15]
Rosie O'Donnell
Cheryl Hines. And we played poker during COVID twice a week with about six or seven women we knew in la. And, you know, I don't know what I would say if I saw her, I don't know. I hope I never have to see him in person because I don't know that I could be able to contain my disgust with him.
- [12:33]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well, he said the other day, genes don't cause epidemics. You need an environmental toxin. So even, even as the head of hhs, he's still peddling this thing. And we know autism rates among children have increased. This is according to the New York Times just recently. They've increased nearly fivefold since 2000, when the CDC first began collecting data on the conditions incidents in children. The CDC's report attributed some of the increase in its prevalence to more screening for the condition. Researchers have pointed to several other factors, including greater awareness of what autism looks like.
- [13:07]
Rosie O'Donnell
A hundred percent, yes. And, you know, they didn't discover all of this mountain range until recently, and I'm pretty sure the mountain range was there before they discovered it. Listen, nobody was talking about autism when we were in School. I'm 63 years old. I don't remember one person mentioning that word. When I first heard about autism, it was through the movie Rain Man. It was through, you know, Judge Wapner. Judge Wapner, you know, And I had no understanding of what it was. And so when I had a child who was fully verbal at one, who had a college level vocabulary at five, I was really. That we were dealing with a different kind of computer brain system. Most of us are on apple point and click. And she's like, coding fast in a million ways. And, you know, she has party tricks. She tells me about the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean that's ever been measured. She knows facts about the Mariana Trench that would make her win on Jeopardy, you know, and I constantly Google to see when she goes to bed. Is that true? It's true.
- [14:14]
Jim Acosta
Wow.
- [14:14]
Rosie O'Donnell
You know, there's a great There. There's some sort of hybrid intelligence that happens as well now. It's a spectrum. It's from people as brilliant as Albert Einstein to people who sadly cannot talk. But that doesn't mean their lives are worth any less than the next person.
- [14:30]
Jim Acosta
That's right. They're children of God. And Rosie, I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about your documentary. In case folks who are just tuning in, Rosie has a new documentary on Hulu, Unleashing Hope, the Power of Service Dogs for Children with Autism. And we see examples of your child and the amazing things that she can do. And I was watching this and thinking to myself, this is. I mean, I Thought my little girl was. Was brilliant. Obviously, when she was. We all think our kids are brilliant. I was watching this video of your child, and I was like, wow, right? And you said, this is different.
- [15:07]
Rosie O'Donnell
This is different. Nine years old, when, you know, I. I said to her, will you sit down and talk about how Kuma has changed her life? And she says that we left it in the documentary. I really would like to, but I have a lot of drawing to do. You know, like, she, you know. And there's Caleb, the beautiful boy in the documentary who was so giving and his family so loving and articulate. He could express every emotion he felt about the dog verbally, whereas my child expresses it in a different way. Her stimming stopped. She was stimming incessantly. Her stimming was lessened. Not that there's anything wrong with stimming, because it's how they regulate themselves.
- [15:45]
Jim Acosta
What do you mean by stimming? And for folks who don't understand that.
- [15:47]
Rosie O'Donnell
Stimming is anything from flapping your hands to incessant moving your hair. And for her right now, it's running. She runs the perimeter of every room that she's in, so we have to move the couches and the chairs away from the wall so she can run the entire perimeter of the house and then crash as hard as she can into the couch. And that's what her body needs, that kind of stimulation in order to regulate herself. And when she's more upset, there's more stimming that happens. And that goes on. Now, when she would be a little out of control with the stimming, I could give a command to Kuma, the service dog, and that dog would lay on top of her. That dog would. Yes. Would put his head on her lap, would put his head near her hands that couldn't stop moving and couldn't stop its own language. Exactly. It's its own language. And this dog is a miracle. And the fact that Guide Dogs of America does this service, Jim, for free, because the machinists union years ago had a man in the union who went to get a dog and they told him he was too old, he was losing his sight. And what did they decide to do for their union, brothers and sisters? Create their own Guide Dogs of America service so that no one would be able to be turned down because of the age of the. Of the person applying. So they did, minus the red tape. And they've been doing it for 50 years. And it is the most unbelievable group of people I've had the privilege of meeting. And knowing they changed my heart. I feel like the Grinch. The. My heart grew 10 times that day to spend, you know, 10 days with 10 blind people, 10 parents of autistic children, and 10 veterans from different wars who are now suffering from PTSD and or mobility issues due to cancer from the burn pits. To have to interact with them all of that time for two weeks away from your own child, that, you know, was the scariest part for me, to tell you the truth. I didn't know how they would do away from me for that long because we had never been separated for that long, ever.
- [17:59]
Jim Acosta
Wow. Wow. And so. And so tell me about how the dog came into your. Kuma is the name of the dog, and how Kuma came into your life. I mean, how did this. How did. Did you put the pieces of the puzzle together and say, wait a minute, maybe a dog might help? Did somebody come to you and say, you know, try this?
- [18:15]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes. You know, I was at the end of my rope because when she was 9, she started turning inward and turning darker. And this photos I can show you of her up till eight or years old, happy and laughing and bubbly. And then 9 to 11, we were in the dark place, and some of her drawings had knives in them or bloody hands. And I would say, what is that? And she'd say, they got stabbed. And I was like, well, where did you hear that? And she, you know, she just was in, like, a morose kind of. Kind of sadness. And I didn't know how to reach her. I felt like she was drifting away. So I, being a person of privilege, had the access to the UCLA Autism Center. I had access to therapists and to OTs and to PTs. And we did every service and every therapy that had been recommended to us, and still she was floating away. And about three years ago, I became friendly with Lyle Menendez. Lyle Menendez had written me in 1996 and thanked me for supporting him and his brother and speaking so highly of Leslie Abramson and the work that she did during their trial, trying to convince America that sometimes fathers committed atrocities against their children, and these two boys were victims of that. And, you know, the public was unwilling to hear. But I spoke out for him in 96, and he wrote me right when my show premiered. And I said to Barbara Walters, we were having dinner one night, and I said, I got this letter. It was thick, you know, like many pages handwritten from Lyle Menendez. And she had interviewed them a few months before. And she said, just like she always would, Wozie, he's a manipulator. Please, whatever you do, don't return his call, you know, so I kind of.
- [20:05]
Jim Acosta
That's a great. Barbara Walters. Barbara Walters.
- [20:06]
Rosie O'Donnell
Thank you very much. I did love her very much. She was quite something, I can tell you that.
- [20:10]
Jim Acosta
Amazing.
- [20:11]
Rosie O'Donnell
But she told me not to. And, and it was the height of the beginning of my show and I didn't quite know how to answer some of the questions he had. And it wasn't until three years ago when a new documentary came out with new evidence about Roy Roselio from Menudo, who was sexually abused by Jose Menendez. I remember that, yes. In the same house that the boys grew up in. And a Lyle, sorry, an Eric letter that he had written to his cousin that was not introduced in evidence way before the murder about the sexual abuse from the father. And so these two new pieces of evidence started a habeas corpus, I believe that's the technical term that they would get it relooked at so they could possibly be re sentenced or maybe could perhaps have another trial. And that was what the documentary was about. And so I went on TikTok and I said, I believe them. I believed them 30 years ago and I believe them now. About two days later, my phone rang and woman said by cell phone, which you know, was not publicly available. Hello, this is Rebecca Menendez. I am Lyle Menendez's wife. And I was like, lyle Menendez has a wife. And he has had a wife for 30 years, a brilliant wife who was a lawyer and who has never once been seen in the public. But she has supported him and loved him and helped him with his case for all of this time. She's a remarkable woman. She told me that he wanted to talk to me. So I said, well, give him my number. And on Mother's Day a few years ago, the phone rang and it was him. And we talked for two hours that day. And you know, can you imagine, though, you're in prison for three decades and you have your group of people, your seven or 10 people outside that are relating to you. It's difficult to relate to someone who's in prison on death row, not death row, but life without, life without the possibility of parole, what they call it in the jail, which is what I learned when I went to visit him and how I saw the service dogs. I said to the service dog handlers, oh, you must be getting out if this is your 12th dog. And the guy looked at me and said, no, ma' am, I'm life without. And I didn't know what he meant. I said, what do you mean, life without? He said, without the possibility of parole. And it just made me weak in the knees. Jim, I didn't know what to say to him here. He had given 24 years of his life training these dogs for years at a time to give to other families, and he was never to be released from prison.
- [22:43]
Jim Acosta
Wow, that's incredible.
- [22:44]
Rosie O'Donnell
And I was very moved, and I said, who do you give these dogs to? And they told me that it was vets, it was people who were blind, and it was kids who had autism under the age of 12. And I said, oh, well, I'd like to thank you on behalf of autism parents. I don't have a dog, but I'm sure that if I did, I would be great. Russ, the man who runs Guide Dogs of America, said, why don't you have a dog? I said, I never heard of this. And I've been like the queen of Google for autism since she was. Googled everything since she was diagnosed. I did a deep dive to try, like every parent does. You know, when your child is diagnosed with autism, you don't get a guidebook.
- [23:28]
Jim Acosta
No.
- [23:29]
Rosie O'Donnell
Nobody tells you, here's what it's going to be like. Because if you meet one child with autism, you've met one child with autism. Caleb's autism is not the same as Clay's autism is not the same as someone else's autism. It comes in a variety of flavors and spices and different kind of neurodiversity, and it should be celebrated, not ridiculed, not considered a disease, and not put on a list of people who don't. Someone doesn't deem as worthy as the next.
- [24:01]
Jim Acosta
And since you brought up the Menendez brothers, what do you think's gonna happen in that case? Because it sounds as though, you know, there was a. There was a ray of light that maybe they might get a day in court, might get released, something might happen, and then it doesn't. Now it doesn't look like that's going to take place with the new prosecutor out there.
- [24:18]
Rosie O'Donnell
I believe that it will take place, and I believe that Gavin Newsom has to stand up and say, enough is enough. You know these boys. It has been proven. Every member of their family and the deceased parents, siblings, are in support of them. Every single member had. There was so much evidence of the abuse that the first trial was hung by both juries. Each boy had a separate jury, hung juries, both of them. The second trial, they decided because of the O.J. simpson case and the embarrassment to the DA. That they were not allowed to use sex abuse as part of their trial. So they had no defense. That's when they were given life without the possibility of parole. It was totally, totally a mistrial of justice. It was. I'm not saying it right, but they did not provide them with a fair trial. They told them they could not use the defense. That was the truth.
- [25:19]
Jim Acosta
And enough has been raised in this case. Questions have been raised. Serious questions have been raised in this case to the extent that it's. It warrants reexamination. It warrants a new look as to whether they've served enough and should be able to be free.
- [25:39]
Rosie O'Donnell
They were 18 and 21 years old. Their brains were not fully formed yet. There's all kinds of laws now about children. People who are considered children because their brains have not fully formed in their early 20s and their teens being given life sentences. Is that fair to do in our country? Is that fair to do? And there's extenuating circumstances for these men, and they have impeccable records in jail. Lyle has done so much. Eric has done so much. Eric is an amazing artist. He's done murals all over the walls at the prison when you're inside. And Lyle has done the beautification project. They both counsel inmates who have been sexually abused and are trying to get through it. They have done remarkable work while they were incarcerated.
- [26:29]
Jim Acosta
And I have to say, it's amazing to me that you've made this one of your causes. And I do think that it's incredible what they've been through. And it seems to me, I think you're right. I think justice is coming. It's just taking its time. And I have to ask you, Rosie, because you're in Ireland right now, I just wanted to know what's your life like? Because, I mean, do you go down to the corner and go to the pub and they say, rosie, and does that?
- [26:57]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, no, no. I'll tell you the big difference. My show was not on here, okay? So there's no real recognition now. I would say maybe twice a day, someone will say, welcome, Rosie. That's it. Or if people see me, they nod and they wink, but nobody stops you. It's a very different culture. I was reading about Beyonce being here with her little baby years ago in the park in Dublin, and no one coming over to her, and her never having felt that before. So there's a freedom and there's a lack of value on celebrity that America puts on it that is just absolutely over the top.
- [27:35]
Jim Acosta
Or maybe they know and they just leave you alone because they say, hey, that's exactly right.
- [27:39]
Rosie O'Donnell
And maybe it's morning to you.
- [27:41]
Jim Acosta
That kind of thing.
- [27:41]
Rosie O'Donnell
They say, well, at a pub, they'll say, can I buy you a pint? I'm like, sure. They go, why'd you move here, sweetheart? I said, donald Trump. They said, give me a hug. And they want to hug me, right?
- [27:51]
Jim Acosta
You get lots of hugs.
- [27:52]
Rosie O'Donnell
I'm sure I get lots of hugs here in Ireland for my political stances. I can tell you that. It's a country that I've aligned with a lot of their policies and beliefs. And it's very freeing to be in a country where you don't worry that half the people looking at you are thinking that you're the worst thing that ever walked because you're against the fascist in the White House.
- [28:12]
Jim Acosta
Yeah, well. And do you think you'd ever come back?
- [28:16]
Rosie O'Donnell
Well, I would love to come back, because that's my country, and I was born there, and I have children, and they all live there, and, you know, they're gonna have babies soon. And my one daughter has four children, and she lives in Wisconsin, and we don't see her as often as we would like to. But when my other ones have children, I know that I'm gonna want to be an available, participatory grandparent. And I'm waiting for the country to right itself. I'm waiting for the people to stand up and say, no, this is not innately who Americans are. We are not cruel people. We are not people who don't care about our neighbors. We are people who do. I grew up on Long island in the 1960s and 70s, and my mother died when I was 10. And you know who took care of us? The mothers in the other houses of suburban Long Island.
- [29:08]
Jim Acosta
Bingo.
- [29:09]
Rosie O'Donnell
They took us to get our first doctor's appointment when we needed to. They took us. When we broke our arm, to the emergency room. They fed us. They clothed us. Jackie Ellard's mother, Bernice, and Leonie Norton, who just lost her husband this week, they took care of us as if we were their own. And that's the America that I know and love. And I. Yes. And I want to come back, and I want.
- [29:36]
Jim Acosta
Yeah.
- [29:38]
Rosie O'Donnell
This feeling as though you are better than someone that you can put into a group that you can name. The attacks on trans people when they're less than 1% of the population, the most vulnerable people that. That we have in the gay community. To attack the trans people is just so unbelievably un American. It's un American.
- [30:02]
Jim Acosta
And it's almost as though you've been hearing me when I yell at the TV when those ads come on, because to me, it is classic Trumpism in its rawest form. And that his, I think his mind tries to think of who is the most vulnerable population out there, what is the most vulnerable segment of society out there. And let me put my finger on those people. Let me pick on those people, because it'll score points.
- [30:29]
Rosie O'Donnell
Yes, he does. He's trying to amass the underbelly of hatred that the civil rights movement started to address. And with the arrival of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell, I put in that list, too, telling Obama that he would not help him in any capacity and would block him at every turn, and then doing it, not allowing him to appoint Merrick Garland, who. I question whether or not that would be a good appointment. Now, however, they wouldn't appoint him because. Because they didn't want to. And nobody made them. Like, that's what really gets me, Jim, is I'm watching what Trump is doing with this man who he sent to El Salvador, who was innocent of any crime, and he is refusing. He is refusing due process, and he's refusing to let him come back to demand that he be returned. How dare he?
- [31:24]
Jim Acosta
I agree with you. And he has, you know, made comments about maybe applying that to Americans that he would. Wants to go after what he calls the homegrowns. You know, when the President of the United States starts talking about going after the homegrowns, it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning of this, Rosie. And I do think that we are in a place right now where it's not about left versus right, it's about pro democracy versus anti democracy.
- [31:49]
Rosie O'Donnell
I completely agree. It is no longer left versus right. And I feel as though we on the left have to be more considerate and understanding of the lies that were fed to these people who are not perhaps as knowledgeable about television production and whether or not the news is actually the news or entertainment. Many years ago, as you know, they switched the news from its own division with its own integrity into the entertainment department. And the fourth estate was blown apart.
- [32:24]
Jim Acosta
And look what's happening. And everything else.
- [32:27]
Rosie O'Donnell
It's. Can you believe what's happening? It's a crying shame. And I am so, so upset that ABC paid the money for George Stepanopoulos. Correctingly, yes. Calling him a rapist. Which the judge said. Which the judge has said. And that they sued and they paid. And it reminds me of the stories we would hear in our neighborhood about the guys who would show up and say, you owe us 250 a week. And you had to pay them. And once you paid them, they had you for everything.
- [33:06]
Jim Acosta
That's right. It doesn't make the problem go away. And that's the mistake that's been made.
- [33:10]
Rosie O'Donnell
Here in the US that makes the problem go away.
- [33:12]
Jim Acosta
That's the mistake that's been made here in the U.S. people think, well, if I just put it a quarter in the Trump intimidation racket tollbooth, the problem will go away. And it doesn't make it go away. It means you gotta keep going through the toll booth.
- [33:23]
Rosie O'Donnell
No, it doubles it. And it makes him do it bigger and more. Now he's suing 60 Minutes for billions of dollars. Not just the millions that he got from abc, but for billions of dollars. And he has this Supreme Court full of his cronies that are an embarrassment to the Supreme Court's legacy. And here we are in America going, we don't know how to stop him. Well.
- [33:50]
Jim Acosta
People have to start speaking out.
- [33:51]
Rosie O'Donnell
And having the courts and judges and people stand up and speak out, and that's what we must do. And don't let the fear of him stop you, no matter who you are, no matter what you think. Because once democracy dies in America, it's over for the world.
- [34:11]
Jim Acosta
Yeah. Rosie, it has been such an honor and just a real pleasure and a joy for me to connect with you and have this conversation. You are. I mean, the light you are shining in this interview. I have to tell you, I've been keeping an eye on the comments as you've been speaking, and people have just been overjoyed with a lot of. I mean, just about everything that you've said since coming on. So I appreciate everything that you have said, and I encourage everybody to watch your new documentary. I can just tell it's. It's absolutely from the heart.