Roseanne Barr claims ABC fired her because she voted for Donald Trump
UPDATE: Roseanne Barr issued a new, “official statement” regarding her Valerie Jarrett tweet.
“Hi, this is Roseanne Barr and I’d like to welcome you to my own studio, where I’m able to speak for myself to my fellow and sister Americans without the filter of the biased media,” she said in a video posted Friday on her YouTube channel. “This was my statement from the very beginning, and it will continue to be forever because it is the truth. When ABC called and asked me to explain my ‘egregious and unforgivable tweet,’ I told them I thought Valerie Jarrett was white. And I also said I am willing to go on The View, Jimmy Kimmel, or whatever other show you want me to go on and explain that to my audience.”
She continued, “Now, instead what happened was about 40 minutes after that, my show was canceled before even one advertiser pulled out, and I was labeled a racist. Why, you ask? Well, the answer is simple. It’s because I voted for Donald Trump, and that is not allowed in Hollywood.”
ABC has no comment on Barr’s claims. But it’s interesting to recall that the network gave the Roseanne reboot a green light in the first place in an effort to appeal to an overlooked audience — like Trump supporters. ABC previously announced that it will reboot Roseanne as The Conners without Barr’s involvement.
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Roseanne Barr appears to be doubling down on the insults that resulted in ABC firing her and canceling her Roseanne reboot in May.
The controversial comedian caused an uproar when she posted a racist tweet calling former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black, the “offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.“
Barr backtracked on the explosive comment in a subsequent tweet.
“I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks,” she wrote. “I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”
But her attacks on Jarrett have continued. In a conversation with a producer posted to her YouTube page, Barr calls Jarrett a “bitch” and claims not to have known that the former White House official was black.
She also says her anger was aimed not at Jarrett but at the deal made with Iran during the Obama administration. Jarrett was born in Iran and spent the first five years of her life there because of her father’s job as chair of pathology at a hospital in Shiraz.
“I’m trying to talk about Iran!” Barr protests in her new video. “I’m trying to talk about Valerie Jarrett about the Iran deal. That’s what my tweet was about. I thought the bitch was white, goddammit. I thought the bitch was white. F***!”
It’s not the first time Barr has claimed ignorance of Jarrett’s race.
“I’m a lot of things,” she said during a call to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s podcast in June. “I’m a loudmouth and all that stuff, but I’m not stupid, for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person … say they are a monkey. I never would do that! And I didn’t do that.
“And if people think that I did that, it just kills me. I didn’t do that, although they think I did. And if they do think that, I am so sorry that I … you know, it was so unclear and stupid. I’m very sorry, but I don’t think that, I never would do that. I have loved ones who are African-American. I just can’t stand it. I’ve made a huge error.”
[Editor’s note: This post was originally published July 20, 2018, at 10:10 a.m. ET.]
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