Rosie O’Donnell is offering a public mea culpa after recently claiming her friend Wynonna Judd supports President Donald Trump’s divisive policies.
“I just thought as she has performed at Mar-a-Lago that she was [a Trump supporter]. I apologize if I was wrong,” O’Donnell, 64, told People on Friday, October 2.
The unexpected drama between the longtime pals started when O’Donnell appeared on “The Tangle with Kyle Ridley” podcast in August. During the interview, she was asked whether any of her friends still support Trump, 80, after her 20-year feud with the politician.
“I am friends with Wynonna Judd, who I love very much, and I’ve known her for many, many years. And she is a supporter of Trump. And somehow we never bring it up,” O’Donnell told host Kyle Ridley.
She added, “I kind of give her a grace in a way. She’s had so much in her life, with her mom taking her own life and just the complicated nature of her upbringing. And I really love her and I care about her, and for some reason I’m able to put that aside when we interact.”
Judd, 62, rebutted those comments earlier this week, telling People that she was “in shock” over being labeled a Trump supporter by O’Donnell.
“I’ve never spoken to her about politics in my life. She doesn’t know anything about my stuff. I’m an independent,” the country music icon insisted.
Judd stressed that she was not “angry” over the mixup, though she was confused about why O’Donnell mentioned her in the first place.
“I don’t know where it came [from]. It’s [a] complete assumption,” the musician declared. “I heard it and I went, ‘What the…?’ I don’t ever remember talking to her about this, so she’s just assuming. I just don’t want drama. So if there’s going to be drama [about it], I’m like, ‘Oh, for crap’s sake, there’s so much going on right now in the world. Can we just love each other?’”
As O’Donnell mentioned in her apology, Judd did perform at Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort, Mar-a-Lago, in November 2023 during a conference for conservative think tank the America First Policy Institute. Aside from that concert, Judd has largely refrained from discussing her political views in public.
Judd and O’Donnell’s friendship dates back to the 1990s when the Country Music Hall of Fame inductee was a frequent guest on The Rosie O’Donnell Show. They even performed a sketch together on the daytime talk show where O’Donnell pretended to be Judd’s “long-lost sister.”
O’Donnell has made her distaste for Trump very clear throughout their lengthy feud. She announced in January 2025 that she’d moved to Ireland with her child Clay before Trump was sworn in for his second term as president. (Trump later threatened to revoke O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship, though legal experts questioned whether he could actually do so.)
“I knew the best thing for me to do would be to leave until it all got worked out,” she told Page Six in July. “Which – I believe now people have woken up in the United States, and they understand, as you can tell by how empty his state fair was, and how his support has diminished significantly since I left.”
The comedian frequently zinged with Trump during her weeklong stint guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! in August, including making numerous digs at the president in one monologue without ever actually mentioning him by name.
