Rosie O’Donnell said she fled the U.S. in part to protect her “autistic, amazing, nonbinary child” after reading a plan for the country laid out by some of President Trump’s strongest supporters.
“I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN Tuesday.
The “A League of Their Own” star also said she’s no fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump appointed to be his administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services. One of Kennedy’s first orders of business was to order a study he says will determine the cause of autism by September.
Like many people familiar with autism, O’Donnell is skeptical about what Kennedy — whose frequently conspiracy-theory views on medical science are often outside the mainstream — will conclude when summer ends.
O’Donnell told CNN she finds comments Kennedy recently made about people with autism being “incapable of holding jobs” and conducting other ordinary functions to be “disgraceful.”
“I think he’s wholly unqualified to be the head of Health and Human Services,” she added.
RFK Jr. later clarified he wasn’t referring to all autistic people.
O’Donnell posted a TikTok video shortly before Easter calling Kennedy “crazy” while boasting that her 12-year-old child Clay is thriving in their new hometown of Dublin, in Ireland.
“I’m going to do the best that I can to set up a home here in Dublin for me and my little autistic, amazing, nonbinary child,” she said. “I’m thrilled they are doing so well. I never, ever expected their adjustment to be so smooth. But it has been.”
Politico reported Tuesday that Kennedy is considering pulling the COVID-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for kids. Kennedy and Trump have both entertained debunked ideas linking vaccines and autism.
@rosie heres take 2 of “talk about whats happening now” #fascism #resist #kids #speakup #democracymatters
Trump and O’Donnell have been taking pot shots at one another in interviews since 2006, according to a CNN timeline of their bickering.
The 63-year-old star told fans in March that she and Clay had decamped to Ireland on Jan. 15. President Trump, with whom she has a long-running rivalry, was sworn into office five days later.
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