Rosie O'Donnell at an awards ceremony in New York City, May 4, 2019.Anthony Behar/SIPA/AP
President Donald Trump threatened on Saturday to revoke the citizenship of Rosie O’Donnell, an American-born comedian, talk-show host, actress, and long-time Trump nemesis who moved to Ireland after Trump won the 2024 election.
“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. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The Fourteenth Amendment, which protects “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” forbids him from doing that.
Federal statute provides an exception to that standing when a judge—not the president—finds a citizen’s certificate of naturalization was “illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” Some experts have concerns about judges misinterpreting the statute’s wording in cases regarding naturalized citizens: Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman recently wrote in Bloomberg that “the law is not as precise as it should be.”
But his concern should not apply to O’Donnell, who was born in Commack, New York, and is no less American than Donald Trump.
Trump’s threat came a few days after O’Donnell blamed Trump for leaving Texas ill-equipped to handle the catastrophic floods that began on July 4, with 122 people confirmed dead so far. “These are the results that we’re going to start see on a daily basis because [Trump] has put this country in so much danger by his horrible, horrible decisions,” O’Donnell said. “People will die as a result and they have started already. Shame on him.” (She did not respond immediately to a request from Mother Jones).
The First Amendment’s free speech protections allow O’Donnell to share her critiques freely without fear of risking her right to return to the US. But Trump’s public threat to revoke her citizenship is a dangerous escalation of rhetoric that portends a dark future.
When an American president can get away with threatening people’s citizenship simply because he feels unfairly criticized, then journalists, political opponents, and everyday citizens—especially those who became so through the process of naturalization—had better beware.
