Rosie O’Donnell says Ellison-run CNN would be ‘tragic,’ invokes Nazi analogy

Rosie O’Donnell has renewed her criticism of Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison’s pending takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, warning that folding CNN into Mr. Ellison’s expanding media holdings would be “tragic” and suggesting that people defending CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss could face the same historical judgment as Nazi collaborators.

Ms. O’Donnell, the former “The View” co-host who is guest-hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week, made the remarks in an interview with Variety. She argued that a combined Paramount-CBS-CNN under Mr. Ellison would effectively make Fox News’ outlook the industry mainstream rather than an outlier, saying, “It would be like Fox taking over all news channels.”

Ms. O’Donnell then took aim at Ms. Weiss, who has overseen a contested overhaul at CBS News’ “60 Minutes” since Paramount installed her as its editor-in-chief. She argued that the once-vaunted newsmagazine had been gutted under the new leadership and, in the same interview, drew an extended analogy to complicity with Nazism.

“This Bari Weiss person, I don’t know how she can live with herself,” Ms. O’Donnell said of the CBS News chief who’s Jewish. “There are people who are sidling up to him, and history will record all of their names, what they did, and who they stood next to. If you’re in a room with 10 Nazis at a table, and you’re the only one who’s not, there’s a pretty good chance you’re a Nazi.”

Mr. Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is seeking to close Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN. Paramount values the deal at $81 billion in equity and $110 billion including debt assumed in the transaction. A representative for Ms. Weiss did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Ms. O’Donnell’s remarks.

The comments extend Ms. O’Donnell’s yearslong public feud with President Trump, which has deepened since she relocated to Dublin, Ireland, in January 2025, days before his second inauguration. She has said she is applying for Irish citizenship through her grandparents’ ancestry, a step she has tied to Mr. Trump’s threat, made in July 2025 and repeated that September, to revoke her U.S. citizenship — something the Constitution does not permit him to do, since Ms. O’Donnell was born in New York. She has also said the move has strained her family, including a child who she said blames Mr. Trump directly for uprooting them.

Even from Ireland, Ms. O’Donnell has kept Mr. Trump a fixture of her public commentary, including on Sophia Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast, where she theorized their feud stems from her resembling tough girls from his New York childhood. She has acknowledged that her own therapist has urged her to talk about Mr. Trump less for her own well-being, and that her attempts to do so have not lasted.