Donald Trump called Roseanne Barr after the reboot of Roseanne bowed to a massive 18 million viewers on Tuesday night, the NYT reports:
Mr. Trump called Ms. Barr to congratulate her on the revival of her comedy, “Roseanne,” and to thank her for her support.
The call was confirmed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.
The president, an obsessive about how TV shows perform, was enthralled by the “huge” ratings “Roseanne” had received, said a person familiar with the call.
Barr deleted her Twitter account earlier this year after a series of liberal-bashing tweets defending her Trump vote.
Tweeted Barr: “4 those who wonder-back in the day when I was called a ‘liberal’ by journalists, I used to answer-‘I’m not a Liberal, I’m a radical’ & I still am-I voted Trump 2 shake up the status quo & the staid establishment.”
She also claimed: “He is draining the swamp of thieves who steal public money and put it into private pockets, which is TREASONOUS.”
And she claimed he’s fighting child molesters: “Trump is fighting pedophiles and he likes Jews-that infuriates some people.”
Barr’s character on the Roseanne reboot is also a Trump supporter. She said this at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour about that, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
“In The Rosanne Show, I’ve always tried to have it be a true reflection of the society we live in. I feel like half the people voted for Trump and half didn’t, so it’s just realistic,” she said, adding that she’s tried to make the show a realistic portrayal of the working class, in particular. “And, in fact, it was working-class people who elected Trump, so I felt like that was very real and something that needed to be discussed and especially about polarization in the family and people actually hating other people for the way they voted, which I feel is not American.”
Vox reported that one question seemed to get under Barr’s skin:
Soraya Nadia McDonald, a writer for The Undefeated, had asked Barr why Roseanne Conner, the historic protagonist of Barr’s groundbreaking 1988-1997 sitcom Roseanne, would have supported Donald Trump for president when, during the show’s original run, she spoke out forthrightly against the sort of xenophobia and racism Trump seems to represent. Now, in the show’s 2018 revival (debuting in March), Roseanne Conner is a Trump supporter, while her sister Jackie is anything but, which has caused a rift between the two.
Barr said of the xenophobia, “that’s your opinion.”
She added: “He says a lot of crazy sh*t. I’m not a Trump apologist. There are a lot of things he’s done and said that I don’t agree with in the same way there are probably a lot of things Hillary Clinton has done and said you don’t agree with.”
Barr, has however, bought into many of the Trump falsehoods pushed by him and his supporters.
Barr recently appeared on Jimmy Kimmel, who asked her about the Trump stuff.
Said Barr, after Kimmel told her he’s “shocked” that someone so socially liberal and a former friend of Hillary Clinton would vote for Trump: “I’m still the same! You all moved. You all went so f**kin far out, you lost everything. I mean seriously, a lot of your audience, and including me… a lot of us, no matter who we voted for, we don’t want to see our president fail, you know? Because we don’t want Pence.”
“You want Pence? You want Pence for the fricking president?”, she continued. “Then you zip that f**king lip.”
Kimmel praised Barr for depicting a family that is split politically in the new show.
Barr concluded: “Try to think positive for like why people wanted a change. It’s up to the people, here’s my two cents damn it, it’s up to us to make this government work, no matter who’s president. It’s up to us to do our jobs as citizens and if we don’t like something, you know, let them know you don’t like it and then you’ve got another election in two years. Get out there and vote. Change it if you don’t like it.”
