“Rosie, if you can just stop, stop the madness. Stop the lying, and just be free,” Hasselbeck said tearfully, with the talk show host sharing a series of videos in response to O’Donnell’s comments about their 2007 on-air spat.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck is speaking out after her former The View co-host Rosie O’Donnell claimed their infamous 2007 on-air fight was a “setup” by producers.
The drama between the two was reignited earlier this week when O’Donnell, 63, brought up the pair’s past spat during an appearance on the Ricki-Lee, Tim & Joel podcast. The comedian alleged that the late longtime View producer, Bill Geddie, knew that she and Hasselbeck’s debate about American troops in Iraq was going to get heated, and was “prepared” to create the split-screen moment.
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“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. So, the whole thing, I think, was a setup,” O’Donnell claimed after speaking about her past relationship with Hasselbeck.
“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,” she said. “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. I bent over backwards for this woman, and here she was coming at me on national TV about whether or not I was patriotic.”
“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,” O’Donnell added, before bringing up her claim about the split-screen and the fight.
O’Donnell — who joined The View in 2006 — exited the daytime talk show the following year after her spat with Hasselbeck. She later returned to The View as a panelist from 2014 until 2015.
On Thursday, Hasselbeck addressed O’Donnell’s comments in a series of videos posted on her Instagram Stories, with the conservative commentator becoming emotional as she hit back at her former co-host.
“Okay, I’m just coming on here with some truth. Number one, you do not have to agree with someone to be friends with them, and you don’t have to brainwash someone when they’re your friend to think exactly like you think,” she began, bringing up The View’s Whoopi Goldberg as an example.
“We love each other. I just texted her last week and actually thanked her for being a friend who doesn’t want me to think how she thinks, and I don’t require her to think how I think,” Hasselbeck said. “We actually can hold our opinion in one hand and hold the hand of each other with the other and still have relationship. This requires two sane people who have good hearts, who have different opinions, agreeing that we are God’s people and we’re just going to love each other through our opinions and let them be different without punishing the other person.”
She then called out O’Donnell. “This is possible. It’s not possible with someone like Rosie O’Donnell, who time and time again wants to spread lies and hate,” Hasselbeck said. “And Rosie, I’ve tried to call you. I’ve tried to reach out to you when you had your heart issue, when you were saying you were sad on the day of the split-screen.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Hasselbeck passionately urged O’Donnell to “close the yearbook” on their past feud, before sharing her recollection of their on-air fight.
“I went on Fox News and they asked me about it, and I did not defend her comments there,” she said, before denouncing O’Donnell’s claims.
“Went back to The View the next day and there was like a bomb going off in the room next to me with music against my walls,” she continued, noting that she was “very pregnant” at the time of the fight. “She made my entire morning miserable, fit-throwing, and then we got to the set and she went off.”
Hasselbeck also alleged that after the fight O’Donnell “lost it and threw me into early contractions, but ABC made me call and apologize” to O’Donnell, before noting that the split-screen issue “keeps coming up” for her former co-host, accusing her of talking about it “in a way that’s personally attacking me and the integrity of our work there and my personal character.”
“I love my friends who disagree with me. I tried to call you many times and reach out to you after that, Rosie, and you don’t want to repair,” Hasselbeck claimed. “I have to go here because you won’t respond. If you want to get together and talk, let’s do it, come over and swim in my pool, come take a couple laps, come back to America and enjoy your nation. We can have open, free dialogues about what we disagree on. I’ll make you dinner. What do you want to stop the bullying?”
While Hasselbeck said she’s “grateful” that she and Goldberg, along with her other former co-hosts Joy Behar, Meredith Viera, and Sherri Shepherd, were able to coexist despite their different views, she claimed she felt a “manipulation” from O’Donnell.
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“She can create whatever reality she wants. We all see it. We all know it. And honestly, I love you, Rosie. I think God has good plans for you. He sees you, he made you,” she added. “And I really hope that you can be released from whatever this is that’s causing you to cause such harm. And just be free to be creative and loved and awesome because that’s who he made you to be.”
Hasselbeck became emotional as she pleaded with O’Donnell to “stop.”
“My heart is like, just please stop, we’re all just trying our best,” she said tearfully. “Stop lying. Stop. Stop. And in the meantime, and even maybe if you don’t stop, I still forgive you, and it can just be so much more free. Rosie, if you can just stop, stop the madness, stop the lying, and just be free. So I just pray like God’s like fire and glory around you so that you can just be protected from whatever is holding you back in Jesus’ name. And I pray that like the lies that are held over you are released and that you can feel freedom and joy, real joy without feeling satisfaction from trying to lie about somebody and destroy their character. Because here’s the deal, that’s fruitless. You can’t.”
Hasselbeck — who appeared on The View from 2003 until 2013 — looked back at her years on the show, per EW. She noted that although the conversations were “supposed to be civil,” she said O’Donnell would instead tear “someone apart who had an opposing view.”
“Come on, this is not how women should be,” she concluded. “This is not what should be happening.”
EW noted that it reached out to O’Donnell’s reps, noting that the actress said she has “no comment at this time.”
