Rosie O’Donnell has extended a social-media olive branch to First Lady-to-be Melania Trump, apologizing for speculating that Trump’s 10-year-old son is autistic.
O’Donnell apologized to Trump on Thursday via Twitter, the same platform through which she spread the speculation.
“I apologize to @MELANIATRUMP – i was insensitive in my RT – i am sorry for the pain i caused – it was not my intent – i am truly sorry,” O’Donnell wrote, CBS reports. (“The View” alum O’Donnell has since set her Twitter account to private.)
O’Donnell came under heavy fire for retweeting a video suggesting that Barron Trump might have autism.
“Barron Trump Autistic?” O’Donnell wrote in her re-tweet of the video. “If so — what an amazing opportunity to bring attention to the AUTISM epidemic.”
Later, O’Donnell defended the speculation, writing that her daughter was recently diagnosed with the condition.
“Here is how it went down,” O’Donnell wrote. “My 3.5 year old daughter Dakota was diagnosed in September with HFA — high functioning autism. I have been immersed in that world/reality since learning — reading — asking questions. It’s all autism — all the time for the newly diagnosed. As we try to grab onto anything to keep us standing, the knowledge we r not alone there r others living this too.”
The video itself sparked the threat of a lawsuit from Melania Trump on Monday. The following day, the man who posted the video to YouTube, James Hunter, pulled the video from YouTube and issued an apology, calling the video “false, defamatory and malicious.”
“In the video, I suggested Barron Trump might suffer from autism. That is in fact 100 percent false,” Hunter said. “It was incredibly irresponsible of me to diagnose Barron Trump using a selection of misleading videos.”