Rosie O'Donnell said she was surprised when Jimmy Kimmel asked her to guest host Jimmy Kimmel Live for the week of Aug. 17, a run she accepted while Kimmel takes vacation. O'Donnell said the offer came out of the blue, and that she was “very thankful” for it.
Kimmel framed the move as “a special treat” for Donald Trump, a jab that fits the long-running bitterness around the two comics. O'Donnell said she and Kimmel had an adversarial relationship, had never spoken in person and had only texted a few times, though she said Howard Stern tried to smooth things over and that she reached out after Frank Potenza died, prompting a reply from Kimmel.
The booking matters because it puts O'Donnell in the chair for a full week on Jimmy Kimmel Live at a moment when late-night comedy and political speech are under fresh scrutiny. O'Donnell is a former host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show and The View, and she said she supports Kimmel in what he is doing with the First Amendment. She also said Stephen Colbert should not have been gone either, extending the moment beyond one guest-hosting swap.
That support did not keep her from turning sharp when the conversation widened to David Ellison and the media empire around him. O'Donnell said a David Ellison-run would be “tragic,” adding that it would be like Fox taking over all news channels, and she argued that Ellison and Bari Weiss have already pushed a right-wing makeover of CBS News and 60 Minutes. “60 Minutes,” she said, was the gold star of CBS News' entire network.
The contradiction is plain: O'Donnell is stepping in for Kimmel while backing his defense of the First Amendment, but she is also describing a media landscape she thinks is becoming more hostile to the values those shows once protected. She said the Ellisons are now part of what is happening with Hollywood and predicted that history will record the names of the people who sidled up to Ellison. David Ellison's $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which includes, is still pending approval, leaving the broader fight over who controls those outlets unresolved even as O'Donnell gets ready to take the microphone next week.
