Ladies Who Punch

by Ramin Setoodeh

  Oddly enough, nobody had talked to Aiken about what he thought. “Let’s ask him,” Joy said sarcastically. “Call him tomorrow. Let’s keep this thing going indefinitely.”

  Years later, for the first time, Rosie explained the backstory of why she had come to his defense. A few days before he went on Live he had been a guest on The View. “He had come into my dressing room, crying about whether or not to come out. And I sat down with him and I talked to him. There had been a scandal by this time of the army man, or whatever, website he was on,” Rosie said, referencing a tabloid story about Aiken. “He was inching his way out in the way so many born-again Southern Christians have to. I hugged him. Not only do I feel the twenty-years-older mother thing, I feel the twenty-years-old younger-gay thing.” When she saw Ripa on TV that day, Rosie couldn’t bottle her anger.

  “So I had just held a crying boy and then watched him be gay bashed by Kelly Ripa,” Rosie said.

  After the show, Rosie heard from Aiken. First, she said that he thanked her for defending him. And second: “I didn’t know how to come out, so you just did it.”

  Aiken’s recollection of these events is slightly different from Rosie’s. “I have a horrible memory, but I know exactly how this shit went down,” he told me. Aiken said he’d been worried about his interview on The View, because a prominent news anchor had warned him the cohosts might ask him about his sexuality on TV. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Rosie invited Aiken to her dressing room to talk privately before the show, kicking out her makeup team and his bodyguard. “She said, ‘You need to find yourself a boyfriend in North Carolina—not in New York or Los Angeles—and just live peacefully there.’ I said, ‘You’re very presumptuous, Rosie.’ She took my hand, looked me dead in the eye and with more warmth than I think people would imagine she has, she said, ‘Listen, I’m your sister.’ I teared up. It was the very first time a stranger had ever gotten me to come out to them.”

  As he left her dressing room, Rosie promised Aiken a shield of protection. “Nobody is going to ask you about this on the show,” she said. “And if they do, just let this dyke take care of it.”

  But Aiken had no idea that Rosie would make his sexual orientation a talking point after the Ripa incident. “I didn’t see it the same way that she did,” he said. “The truth is she outed me in a way, because I had not been out yet. When she said the words, ‘If that was a straight man,’ she was confirming that she knew that I wasn’t. That was the worst day of my life. I don’t think I’d had a moment more devastating to me. I remember feeling like shit that day and totally deflated. But I definitely wasn’t mad at her.” Aiken said that Rosie later helped him officially come out on the cover of People in 2008, by introducing him to her publicist.

  To me, Rosie didn’t mince her words about Ripa: “I think Kelly Ripa is mean and she doesn’t like me, and she has never wanted to discuss what happened. She wanted to have this weird feud.” Rosie said that under normal circumstances, she would have bonded with Ripa through her All My Children lineage. “She’s the girl from Pine Valley. She and her husband met on the show. That’s my fucking sweet spot. I would have loved her my whole life.” The two never mended fences after the View incident. “I see her at concerts sometimes,” Rosie said. “She just looks away.”

  In the end, Rosie was most upset with View producers for connecting the call. The show hadn’t done that before. “Bill Geddie thinks that makes good TV—two women fighting.” Rosie confronted them about it. “I said, ‘Excuse me, Dusty and Bill, that would be the first time that you sabotaged me live on the air. It will not happen again. If it does happen again, I will not be on the show.” Rosie paused for dramatic effect. “When it happened again, I left.”

  13

  Rosie vs. Donald

  As a talk show host, Rosie O’Donnell was skilled in identifying trends early. Sure enough, she tried to warn us about Donald Trump’s misogyny a decade before his presidency. She could never stomach his false swagger, braggadocio, and, later, endless gloating about his ratings for The Apprentice. After attending his 1993 wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza Hotel (and hearing all the details about their divorce), she wouldn’t book him as a guest on The Rosie O’Donnell Show because she thought he was a jerk. “He’s the most absurdly transparent con man,” Rosie told me. “He’s dumb. His parents didn’t like him; they sent him away to New York Military Academy. He punched his kid in the face at college,” she said, referring to a 2016 Facebook post written by one of Donald Jr.’s former classmates. Rosie brought up stories about his neglecting his parental duties while he played a real estate mogul instead. “He never spoke to his children,” she said. “I’m friendly with Marla, which is how I was at his wedding. I know the shit that he did.”

  When pressed for more details, Rosie hedged, for once. “I can’t say it. You know why Marla doesn’t say it? There are real reasons you don’t say it. People are afraid of him.” She leaned forward in her seat. “I am not.”

  That became abundantly clear on the morning of December 20, 2006. It was Christmas on The View, and the set was decked out like the North Pole with a giant tree and wreaths. The staff could use a bit of holiday cheer. After four months of walking on eggshells, there would be a hiatus, when the show could reset. Despite all the turmoil backstage, The View’s ratings were still riding high. Senator Hillary Clinton was in the studio that day, making her second appearance on the show. Her advisers had decided that she could use The View as a warm-up act, as she prepared to announce her bid as the first plausible female presidential candidate in US history. Clinton had agreed to sit through some chitchat, to gauge how she fared in the crossfire about what it was like to be a woman eyeing the nation’s most powerful job. She’d be “revealing everything, from whether she wants to move back to the White House in ’08 to what she really thinks of the war in Iraq,” the show’s announcer vowed.

  Normally, nothing would have stopped Barbara from face time with a Clinton. But the senator’s booking had materialized late, leaving Barbara adrift: she was on a Caribbean vacation, aboard a yacht with Judge Judy Sheindlin and Cindy Adams. Rosie was free to steer the show without any pushback. The guest cohost that day was entertainment lawyer Crystal McCrary Anthony, joining Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who had fully adopted her new role as Rosie’s work wife. It confounded most of the producers, including Bill Geddie, that they had become so close. “I remember Bill and I both shaking our heads when Rosie and Elisabeth decided to go together to buy the staff Christmas presents,” said producer Alexandra Cohen. “They did it as a team, like, ‘We’re buddies.’ Are you serious?”

  In the Hot Topics meeting, Rosie was eager to pounce on a melodrama involving Donald Trump. For several days, tabloids had been following a story about how the winner of the Miss USA pageant, twenty-one-year-old Tara Conner, had been caught using cocaine and partying in Manhattan clubs, putting her crown in peril. Trump, as the owner of the contest, could have ceremoniously fired her. But why would he do that when he could bet on her sobriety in exchange for wall-to-wall publicity? On December 19, the day before Clinton’s visit to The View, standing before a wooden podium with a white tarp from the Trump Organization in the background, he held a press conference during which he announced a lenient verdict. “Tara is going to be given a second chance,” Trump said, botching the pronunciation of her name. “She’s agreed to go into rehab.” Trump hadn’t notified Conner of his decision in advance, and she thought she was going to be flogged in public. She was so startled, she wept in front of the cameras, as she expressed her profound gratitude. It was, to Trump’s delight, a clip that played all over cable news.

  Rosie had no intention of following the other outlets, which had framed the saga as a happy ending. (Fox News’s angle: “Still Miss USA.”) “She said, ‘We’ll do something fun,’” Geddie remembered. Rosie gave him a taste of her Trump impersonation, flipping her hair to one side, to mimic his comb-over, and speaking in a thick New York accent that sounded lik
e Barney Rubble on testosterone. “It made me laugh,” Geddie admitted.

  The show started. After a frenzied discussion in which Elisabeth confessed that she’d stayed up late the night before with her husband to reupholster a bench, Rosie cut to a commercial.

  “We’ll talk about Trump when we come back,” Joy said with a sneaky grin.

  “Oh, jeez,” Rosie sighed. “I’m getting nauseous. I don’t enjoy him in any capacity. We’ll be back talking about Donald and his hair loop.”

  That was enough of a tease to attract the attention of at least one captive viewer. Trump, who spent his mornings glued to the TV even before he resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was watching from his lair at Trump Tower. Was he a regular fan? “In those days, it’s not like it is now,” Geddie said. “Everybody watched The View, particularly in the media world.”

  After the commercial, Rosie tried out her new material. “All right,” she said. Her argument had a feminist slant. She was outraged that Trump was using this young woman’s drug problem to promote himself. “So Donald Trump is in the news again. Because his show The Apprentice is starting again in January, he held a big press conference to see if he was going to allow Miss USA—such a prestigious title…” Although Rosie had a clear take on the story, her commentary was improvised. She first mimicked Conner’s voice as she cried. Then Rosie introduced her outrageous Trump caricature, complete with the bad hair and boorish voice. “Listen, this guy annoys me on a multitude of levels,” Rosie riffed. “He’s the moral authority? Left the first wife, had an affair. Left the second wife, had an affair. Had kids both times. But he’s the moral compass for twenty-year-olds in America? Donald, sit and spin my friend! I don’t enjoy him. No, no, no.”

  Anthony, the guest cohost, tried to cool things down by defending Trump’s business record.

  Rosie wasn’t allowing it. “He inherited a lot of money, and he’s been bankrupt so many times, where he didn’t have to pay. Do you know what saved him the second time? After his father died, with that money, he paid off his bankruptcy.” She knew this jab would get back to Trump because it had to do with his finances. “Here comes a lawsuit,” Rosie said with a laugh. “Get ready. This could be good.”

  “He sues, you know?” Joy warned.

  “I can imagine,” Rosie scoffed. “He’s going to sue me, but he’ll be bankrupt by that time, so I won’t have to worry.”

  By the end of the segment, Joy’s head fell to the table in uncontrolled laughter. “My memory of it was she took over the stage and went crazy on him,” Joy recalled. “She pulled her hair over and made comments about his infidelities and his money, which probably really freaked him out. As you can see from the fact that he never pays his taxes, that’s something he never wants out there. But it was funny. I enjoyed sitting there and watching it. It was a fabulous show.”

  That would be a tough act for Clinton to follow. The senator’s appearance was no longer the biggest headline on The View that day. Dressed in a stiff pink jacket, her right foot stumbled as she ascended a step to greet the cohosts. She had to catch herself from falling. “Hi, everybody,” she said. The interview was controlled and scripted, a departure from her more relaxed demeanor on The Rosie O’Donnell Show. Clinton talked about how she’d navigate the presidency and her years in Arkansas, where she juggled motherhood with her career. Elisabeth asked her if she’d support Barack Obama, then a junior US senator from Illinois, if she didn’t run.

  “Well, you know I’m going to wait and see how all this develops,” Clinton said calmly. “He’s a terrific guy. We are going to have a lot of good people running in the Democratic primary. Everybody who wants to compete should compete. Let’s throw open those doors.” Nobody imagined that Clinton wouldn’t be the nominee. A Newsweek poll released that week had her defeating Rudy Giuliani and John McCain in the general election.

  “Maybe we’ll be rewinding the tapes one day, and maybe we will have sat with the first woman president,” Elisabeth said, concluding the exchange on a pleasant note. “You never know.”

  * * *

  After the show wrapped and Geddie had returned to his office, a phone call was already waiting for him. Who could it be? In the ugly weeks that followed, “people thought it was about her doing an impression of him. I thought it would be that she made fun of him and his hair,” Geddie said. “It wasn’t.”

  Trump was outraged about the line related to his wealth. “I have never filed for bankruptcy,” he barked on the line.

  Geddie apologized. “I’m sorry, Mr. Trump. It was all done in good fun.”

  That technique didn’t work. Trump threatened—as he’s known to do—to sue The View, ABC, and Barbara Walters for spreading lies about him. “I’ll be talking to my lawyers,” he huffed.

  Geddie attempted a different approach. He told Trump that he was going to call Barbara and they’d get back to him. Geddie knew that his boss would want to hear about this, even from a far-off seaside adventure. “Barbara happened to be on a boat somewhere with Judy Sheindlin. You can’t make this shit up,” Geddie said. Barbara hadn’t seen the episode yet, but the prospect of getting embroiled in a public lawsuit with Trump worried her.

  “This is terrible,” Barbara said. “If we did something wrong, we have to say we did something wrong.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Geddie responded. “He’s been part of businesses that have gone bankrupt, but he has not personally gone bankrupt before.”

  Barbara sprang into damage-control mode, thinking that she could clean up this mess by talking to Trump. “He was a good friend of Barbara’s,” Geddie said. Barbara, who had interviewed Trump many times over the years, asked Geddie to arrange a three-way call. When Trump answered (he always picked up his phone quickly back then), Barbara presented herself as a sympathetic ally. She told Trump that she would issue a statement clarifying his finances when she returned to TV in a few days. Rosie’s name came up, and some harsh words may have been exchanged about her, depending on whom you believe.

  Rather than wait for the next episode of The View, Trump went nuclear. He always subscribed to the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and this was his chance to dominate the airwaves, serving as his own spokesperson. Trump appeared on more than twenty programs with one goal in mind: to viciously attack Rosie. His interviewers included Anderson Cooper, David Letterman, People magazine, Access Hollywood, The Insider, and Good Day LA. If he couldn’t be in the studio, he’d call in, hurling offensive labels at her and threatening to steal Rosie’s wife away from her. (As if he had the power to turn a gay woman straight.) In the days that followed, Trump called Rosie “fat little Rosie,” “stupid,” “a little clam,” “unattractive,” “that animal,” and a “degenerate.”

  Rosie responded on December 27, through her blog, with a haiku: a young girl in nyc / meets a pimp / he cons her into a life of illusion / she works for him. That only provoked Trump. “I’m a pimp because, unlike her, I gave a girl a second chance,” he told CNN’s Cooper. “That’s why I’m a pimp? You’re not allowed to make statements like that, Anderson.” In his press blitz, he detailed his private conversation with Barbara, revealing to anyone who would listen that she expressed profound regret at hiring Rosie. “Barbara fully understands what Barbara told me,” Trump said to the Associated Press, after Barbara tried to deny it. “At the same time, she can’t say that because she has to work with that woman. But she won’t be working with her long. I mean, that thing will explode because Rosie’s wacko.”

  Trump’s claims were often left unchecked by professional journalists, who gave him all the free airtime he desired. “I’m not running for office,” he said on CNN, when asked about his choice of words. “I don’t have to be politically correct.” The boisterous media tour offered a preview of the strategy he’d later adopt as a presidential candidate, one in which he lashed out against powerful women such as Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Megyn Kelly, and Carly Fiorina with impunity.

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bsp; “I knew that Donald Trump is particularly wounded by being made fun of by women,” Joy said. “He doesn’t like it. He turned on me, too, because I made a joke about his hair. She got him, and he could not control himself. He could not stop talking about Rosie O’Donnell, calling her every name in the book, going after her physicality. It was disgusting. He’s a nasty man.” Joy said that the feud revealed his true character. “I am not shocked by his behavior right now because I sat there and saw the whole thing.”

  For Rosie, who wore her heart on her sleeve, the Trump attacks disrupted her life and family. She felt as if she’d been left alone to deal with his vitriol. “That was the hardest thing to watch,” said Janette Barber. “All she did was the same joke every comic in the country was doing. The only reason he did that, in my opinion, is because The View was so relevant and she was so visible and brilliant. If you were to mention Rosie, you were in the press.”

  Rosie said she was shocked that when Trump attempted to humiliate her, other powerful women didn’t come to her defense: “I thought, ‘Well, here comes Gloria Steinem and the new head of NOW and maybe Susan Sarandon and every fucking feminist—Robin Morgan, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda.’ Here comes the woman tribe that are going to stand up and go, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Let’s take out some fact sheets. This man was slandering me with the help of Roger Ailes and Fox News. It was a full-on character assassination, the same way they try to do it with James Comey or anyone they don’t like.” She said that Steinem has since apologized to her for staying silent.

  For years, Trump continued to wage his war with Rosie for his own benefit. He offered her $2 million to appear as a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice, which of course Rosie didn’t accept. He dragged her name into two presidential debates to avoid answering difficult questions about his own behavior toward women. During a lunch, Rosie revealed another way the Trump fight resurfaced in her life. “In 2015, my son and myself were targeted by trolls on my Twitter account. And I hired a forensic digital person and they found it was the Russians. I have this thick binder from the investigator of what they did. So Roger Ailes and Fox News, if they target you, they will not stop.”