Rosie O’Donnell drops truth bombs on Elisabeth Hasselbeck insisting their infamous ‘The View’ clash was never real.NH

It’s 2007 all over again: Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are involved in another headline-making back and forth.

Nearly two decades after their debate over O’Donnell’s alleged lack of support of the troops during the Iraq War shook up the ABC daytime series, the two former View co-hosts (and former friends) have been revisiting their infamous on-air argument, O’Donnell kicking things last week off by claiming that former View producer Bill Geddie had staged the chaos.

“Our producer [was] not an on-the-fly kind of guy,” O’Donnell said during an interview with Australian radio show Ricki-Lee, Tim Joel. “He wasn’t like, Mr. Let’s-Go-To-a-Split-Screen.’ That was prepared. The whole thing, I think, was a setup.”

Hasselbeck, 48, disagreed, tearfully firing back at O’Donnell’s claims with several posts on her Instagram Stories.

Well, O’Donnell has now weighed in on Hasselbeck’s response. And it’s clear there’s no love lost there.

“Apparently, it upset Elisabeth because she was on Fox News — what a surprise — with her reply,” the comedian said in an Instagram video posted on Oct. 10.

She then proceeded to read through what Hasselbeck said about her, reacting throughout.

In one moment, Hasselbeck asked O’Donnell to “stop lying,” but said she “still” forgives O’Donnell even if O’Donnell doesn’t.

“You forgive me?” O’Donnell said sarcastically. “What a relief.”

In Hasselbeck’s response, she said to O’Donnell, “I just pray God’s fire and glory around you so that you can be protected from whatever is holding you back.”

“Nothing’s holding me back, Elisabeth,” O’Donnell quipped. “‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Rosie O’Donnell!’ I don’t hold back, sweetheart.”

O’Donnell also insisted that she is “full of freedom and joy” despite Hassebeck’s concerns.

“Honey, this wasn’t about you or your character. It was about the truth of what happened, from my perspective. That’s it,” O’Donnell said.

“Hate to tell you, I don’t really think about you that much until an interviewer asks me,” said O’Donnell. “It’s not like I’m walking around going, ‘God, do you think Elisabeth will ever forgive me?’ I’m not. So don’t worry about me or my freedom or joy, and just enjoy our life, and I’m gonna do the same.”Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O’Donnell, Barbara Walters and Joy Behar on ‘The View’.

The spat between O’Donnell and Hasselbeck on The View is easily the most talked-about moment in the show’s 28 years on air.

As fans will remember, the two — who fall on opposite sides of the liberal and conservative political spectrum — formed an unlikely friendship when O’Donnell joined the program in 2006. But tensions over O’Donnell’s criticisms of then-President George W. Bush put her in the hot seat, and Hasselback did not come to her defense.

“Every day since September I have told you that I support the troops,” O’Donnell famously said on air. “I asked you if you believed what the Republican pundits were saying. You said nothing, and that’s cowardly.”

Ultimately, O’Donnell’s tenure on the show’s panel ended as a result of that conversation. Two days after the episode aired on May 23, 2007, O’Donnell asked to be released from her contract despite only being on air for 8 months. ABC agreed.

At the time, her friend Jackie Ellard told PEOPLE that O’Donnell was “tired of the day-to-day fighting” and didn’t “second-guess her decision at all.”

O’Donnell later wrote on her blog that she’d “never tried harder to be friends with someone than I did with [Hasselbeck]” as she said she “probably” wouldn’t be speaking to her former co-host again
Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Rosie O’Donnell on ‘The View’ in 2014.

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During her interview with Ricki-Lee, Tim Joel last week, O’Donnell echoed those same sentiments as she recalled “all I did” for Hasselbeck.

“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. And so, she came to my house, she swam in my pool, she brought her little kid, I took her kid to see Sesame Street Live, I took her to her first Broadway opening.” 

“Like, I bent over backwards for this woman, and here she was comin’ at me on national TV about whether or not I was patriotic,” she said. “It felt to me like I was on a basketball team of five women and one of them kept tripping me on my way to the hoop.”Bill Geddie on ‘The View’.

Hasselbeck, who joined the news program in 2003, remained as a co-host on The View until 2013. For Barbara Walters’ last season in 2014, both O’Donnell and Hasselbeck returned alongside all the show’s former cohosts, even sitting next to one another.

“Elizabeth just kicked me under the table,” O’Donnell joked on air.

O’Donnell, meanwhile, returned to co-host The View briefly in season 18 — remaining on the show from September 2014 to February 2015 Geddie, who co-created The View with Walters, was no longer producing.

He died in July 2023. He was 68.