Longtime Trump foe and comedian Rosie O’Donnell will return to television later this summer as Jimmy Kimmel takes a two-month break from his show, the late-night host announced.
“I will be taking the next two months off, this time voluntarily,” the host quipped Thursday, referencing ABC pulling his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, for six days last September over a widely criticized monologue about conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“As a special treat for our commander in chief, I asked one of his all-time favorites, Rosie O’Donnell, to be here to keep the hits coming,” Kimmel said. “So you’re welcome. And all I ask in return, Mr. President, is that you don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
O’Donnell will begin a weeklong guest stint on Monday, Aug. 17, a spokesperson for the comedian told Entertainment Weekly.
The feud between Trump and O’Donnell, herself a former talk show host, began in 2006 when Trump criticized Tara Conner, the winner of that year’s Miss USA. O’Donnell, then a host on The View, defended Conner and called Trump a “snake-oil salesman on Little House on the Prairie.”
Their quarrel entered the national spotlight during Trump’s first successful presidential campaign when, at a 2015 debate, moderator Megyn Kelly asked then-candidate Trump about calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” on social media, to which he responded, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
More recently, Trump threatened to revoke O’Donnell’s citizenship after the comedian moved to Ireland following Trump’s 2024 election, writing, “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.”
Kimmel’s break comes months after he was suspended over a monologue alleging the suspected assassin in Kirk’s murder was part of the “MAGA gang.”
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“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said on Sept. 15, prompting public outcry and ABC suspending his show from Sept. 17-22 before lifting the preemption on Sept. 26.
Also guest-hosting during Kimmel’s break are Tiffany Haddish, Colman Domingo, Ike Barinholtz, Anthony Anderson, and Jelly Roll.