Elizabeth Hasselbeck wants Rosie O’Donnell to stop bullying her.
In a since-deleted Instagram Story post shared by Entertainment Tonight, O’Donnell tearfully implored her former “The View” co-host, 63, to “stop lying” after she mentioned a 2007 on-air fight in a recent interview on Australian radio show “Ricky Lee, Tim & Joel.”
During a radio interview, O’Donnell said he “bent over backwards” to get along with Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck openly questioned the “League of Their Own” star’s patriotism during the argument. “And then she confronted me on national television about whether or not I was patriotic,” O’Donnell said.
Ms. O’Donnell also said she believed the infamous shouting match, in which Mr. Hasselbeck accused him of failing to protect himself from conservative media criticism of his anti-war views, was “staged” and “prepared” in advance by producers.
In the wake of the split-screen controversy, ABC announced that O’Donnell had asked to be terminated from his contract after just eight months on the show. However, she briefly returned to “The View” in 2014.
“My heart is like, ‘No more, please,'” Hasselbeck said in an emotional video. “We’re all just doing our best.”
“And even if you didn’t stop, I still forgive you,” she said. “And Rosie, if you can stop, you can be freer. Stop the madness, stop lying, and just be free.”
Elsewhere in the clip, Hasselbeck added: “I sincerely hope that we can be freed from those who are causing this harm.”
“I love friends who disagree with me,” Hasselbeck said, referring to her ongoing friendship with “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg, whom she calls “the friend who doesn’t want me to think what she thinks.”
“Rosie, I’ve called you many times and tried to get to you, but you just don’t want to fix it,” he said, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“Since you’re not responding, I have to come here,” she continued. “If you want to get together and talk, let’s do it. Come to my pool, swim, do a few laps, come back to America and enjoy the country. We’re free to have an open dialogue about our differences. We’ll make dinner. What do you want to stop the bullying?”
Hasselbeck also accused the comedian of “trying to tear apart people who hold opposing views” and “trying to lie about someone and destroy their character.”
Representatives for Mr. O’Donnell did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
In a radio interview with Mr. O’Donnell, the liberal TV host said he promised not to become “enemies” with Mr. Hasselbeck, who is famously conservative.
“She came to my house, swam in my pool, took her little child and I took her child to ‘Sesame Street Live’ and to her first Broadway opening,” O’Donnell claimed, adding that during the on-air argument, she felt like she was “on a five-woman basketball team and one of them kept tripping me on the way to the hoop.”
