Roseanne Barr: I’m Not Against Valerie Jarrett Personally

After comparing Valerie Jarrett to an “ape” in May, Roseanne Barr now says she shouldn’t have made her argument with the former Barack Obama adviser so personal.

The Roseanne actress, 65, addressed Jarrett on the Rabbi Shmuley Podcast on Friday, July 6, but she still took the opportunity to air more of her critiques of the 61-year-old former official. “My sister helped me because she’s a Torah student, too, and she helped me to say, ‘The work of your hands … makes me feel threatened,’” she said. “I shouldn’t have said, you know, like you said — don’t make it personal. But you kind of have to when it’s, like, the work of your hand is what I’m against — not you personally — but the work of your hands.”

In May, Barr tweeted “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” She later claimed she had been “Ambien tweeting” and was “not a racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke.” Nevertheless, ABC immediately canceled the hit Roseanne revival and later rebranded the show as The Conners, which stars the original cast minus the controversial actress.

Barr apologized for her actions on a previous episode of the Rabbi Shmuley Podcast, saying, “Of course I’m not a racist. I’m an idiot. I might have done something that comes across as a bigoted and ignorant, and I know that that’s how it came across. I ask for forgiveness because I do love all people, I really do.”

The actress continued: “I have black children in my family. I never would have wittingly called any black person and say they are a monkey. I just wouldn’t do that, and I didn’t do that, and that people think that I did that — it just kills me.”

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