Donald Trump isn’t welcome on ‘Ellen’
By Ross Semple
Ellen Degeneres won’t be welcoming the president to her talk show anytime soon.
Ellen, a prominent progressive voice and out lesbian, made the comments during an interview with Today‘s Matt Lauer, which marked 20 years since Ellen publically came out.
When Lauer asked Ellen if she’d sit down with the president, Ellen said she wouldn’t. Why? “Because I’m not going to change his mind,” she said. “He’s against everything that I stand for.”
She continued: “We need to look at someone else who looks different from us and believes in something that we don’t believe in and still accept them and let them have their rights.”
Ellen came out as a lesbian in an April 1997 edition of Time magazine, shortly before the title character on her TV sitcom Ellen revealed her sexuality.
“I knew that I was going to—that was one of the things when I decided to have my character on the show come out, I knew I was going to have to come out too. But I didn’t want to talk about it until the show was done,” she revealed at the time.
The incident caused a media sensation, which led to advertisers pulling out of the show and ultimately its cancellation the following year. On the topic of her coming out, Ellen said: “I wish I would have done it sooner, I wish I hadn’t waited so long.”
Ellen told Lauer that she wasn’t offered work for a long time after her sitcom was cancelled, revealing that she didn’t know how she would support herself. “I was not offered one thing and I was running out of money and didn’t know if I was going to work again.”
Now that she hosts one of the most successful shows on television, produces other shows, and had a role in one of last year’s biggest movies (Finding Dory), we doubt she ever has to worry about money again.
Watch the interview below:
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