‘Tangerine spray tan’: Comedian mocks Trump after citizenship threat

London: A comedian who fled America after the election of Donald Trump has mocked the US president from her new home in Ireland after he issued an angry threat to cancel her citizenship.

Rosie O’Donnell, who won Emmy awards as a US television host, likened Trump to a malign king with a “tangerine spray tan” in reply to his social media post calling her a threat to humanity.

The exchanges renewed an enmity that has lasted for almost two decades, while also highlighting how Americans ranging from television stars to scientists have moved to Europe because Trump has regained the presidency.

Eight American researchers arrived at the University of Aix-Marseille in late June after it issued an open invitation in March for scientists to relocate if they were concerned about academic freedom under Trump.

O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her family in April and has returned to stand-up comedy in Dublin in recent weeks, but she has also kept up her criticism of Trump in the media.

“People say, you moved to Ireland, just forget about Trump. I can’t, the crimes are too big,” she told The Irish Times in a feature on the weekend.

She also posted a TikTok video blaming Trump for cutting early warning systems before the recent floods in Texas, a charge fiercely contested by the president’s supporters.

Trump responded by saying she should stay in Ireland.

“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,” he wrote.

“She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

O’Donnell replied from Ireland with a taunt about Trump being “rattled” at her criticism.

“You call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth an American who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze,” she wrote on Instagram.

“You crave loyalty – I teach my children to question power. You sell fear on golf courses – I make art about surviving trauma. You lie, you steal, you degrade – I nurture, I create, I persist.”

O’Donnell said Trump was “everything that is wrong with America”.

“I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it. You want to revoke my citizenship? Go ahead and try, king Joffrey with a tangerine spray tan, ” she said, referring to Joffrey, a spoiled and sadistic bully in the Game of Thrones books and TV show.

O’Donnell was born in New York state in 1962. The US president does not have the power to revoke the citizenship of people born in the US, a right given it the US Constitution.

While Trump is seeking to overturn that right, a federal judge on Friday granted a temporary block of his order restricting birthright citizenship.

Trump and O’Donnell have traded barbs since 2006, when she appeared on The View and criticised him for telling others about morality when he had affairs outside his marriages.

When she spoke about her weight loss in 2014, he tweeted that she felt shame at being fat.

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