Rosie O’Donnell looked back on an explosive fight she got into with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View, claiming that the conflict was set up by the show’s producers.
O’Donnell reflected on the argument, which took place on a May 2007 episode of the talk show, while appearing on the Ricki-Lee, Tim and Joel podcast.
“Our producer is not an on-the-fly kind of guy, he wasn’t mister like, ‘Let’s go to the split-screen.’ That was prepared,” O’Donnell alleged about the show’s late producer Bill Geddie, who died in 2023. “So, the whole thing, I think, was a setup.”
During the 2007 episode, The View co-hosts got into a heated debate about America’s involvement in the Iraq war. At one point, O’Donnell called out Hasselbeck for not defending her when the media accused her of calling U.S. troops “terrorists.”
“You are an adult and I am certainly not going to be the person for you to explain your thoughts; they’re your thoughts!” Hasselbeck shouted in response, while the episode was edited to have her and O’Donnell on the screen side-by-side.
“It felt to me like I was on a basketball team of five women, and one of them kept tripping me on the way to the hoop. When they had the split screen?” O’Donnell said during the recent interview.
O’Donnell also added that the argument was especially hurtful because she believed she and Hasselbeck had a genuine friendship at the time.
“I can not believe that this woman, after all I did for her, because when I took that job, I made one commitment to myself, that I was not going to be her enemy, that I was going to meet her as a person,” O’Donnell explained.
She continued to share a glimpse into what their friendship was like by saying, “She came to my house; she was in my pool, she brought her little kid. I took her kid to Sesame Street Live; I took her to her first Broadway opening.” O’Donnell then went as far to say that she “bent over backwards for this woman.”
Even after Hasselbeck departed the show in 2013 and O’Donnell stopped serving as a co-host in 2015, after previously leaving at the end of the 2007 season, their feud continued in the following years.
Hasselbeck, who’s known for her conservative views, returned to be a guest co-host on The View in 2022. After the episode aired, O’Donnell took to TikTok to reveal she watched the episode and it reminded her “why I don’t wanna watch it with her anymore.”
She went on to express her issues with Hasselbeck’s props, including Post-it notes she used to make her points. “Her little Post-it notes… I don’t know. Listen, it’s strange,” O’Donnell said. “Hope you’re having a good day, and if you saw that yesterday, hope you recovered.”
