Forget Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, and Xi Jinping, everyone knows Donald Trump‘s true nemesis is Rosie O’Donnell. The actress and comedian has been a thorn in Trump’s side for decades, and the hatred is mutual.
Trump has variously described her as “a real loser”, “fat little Rosie”, and “a degenerate” (among many, many other insults). O’Donnell hasn’t taken this lying down, calling Trump an “orange anus”, a “criminal con man sexual abusing liar”, “a danger to the world”, and “king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan.”
O’Donnell has, perhaps smartly, moved to Ireland as your greatest enemy becoming America’s dictator isn’t a great omen for your future happiness. Now, over the summer, Trump appears to be making moves for her to stay there.
In early July, he said, “She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” and teased revoking her U.S. citizenship. Now he’s back beating that drum once again, indicating moves are indeed underway to do just that:
The law says “no”, but what does Trump care?
So, can he actually do that? Top law professor Steve Vladeck believes this is just hot air. He told CNN:
“For good reasons, it is difficult to denaturalize a U.S. citizen and even harder to expatriate one. Congress has provided for only a handful of circumstances in which the executive branch is empowered to pursue such a move; and the Supreme Court has recognized meaningful constitutional limits (and an entitlement to meaningful judicial review) even in those cases.”
That may be the case, but Trump doesn’t seem to care much about pesky things like “the law” or what the Constitution might say. If he wants to snatch O’Donnell’s citizenship from he,r he can probably just do it via executive order, wait for it to be challenged in the courts, then fight that all the way to the Supreme Court.
You might wonder whether Trump really is petty enough to do all that just to take down a woman who was mean about him on a chat show decades ago. The answer is a resounding “yes, duh”. Trump is perhaps the only person petty enough to go through with this threat. At this point, the idea that Trump isn’t serious when he hints at doing something stupid has been disproven many times over.
Here’s hoping O’Donnell can remain happily in Ireland with the Atlantic Ocean between her family and her maniacal, revenge-crazed, nuclear-armed nemesis.
