Despite applauding her for her huge ratings months ago, Donald Trump isn’t saying a word about Roseanne Barr now that her sitcom has been canceled.
The president on Tuesday appeared at a Nashville campaign rally and ignored questions about “Roseanne” getting the ax earlier that day, instead focusing heavily on his 2016 victory in the presidential election. During that spiel, he took time to take aim at his former presidential rival, Hillary Clinton and dissed Jay-Z.
“The only way she filled up the arena was to get Jay-Z,” Trump says. “And his language was so filthy it made me like the most clean-cut human being on Earth. It’s true. He’d stand up there before those crowds — and by the way, without any musical instruments, I had much bigger crowds than he was drawing. But he’d stand up before those crowds, and he’d use the f-word, and Hillary would sit back [and say] ‘I’m in trouble, I’m in trouble! Please don’t have him use that kind of language anymore.’ And then he’d finish and everyone would leave, and she’d be standing up making a speech to 400 people.”
Earlier, the White House refused to respond to ABC canceling “Roseanne,” which came after the show’s namesake star tweeted of former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarette, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
“The President spent his day focused on dealing with the things going on with North Korea, trade roll-out this morning. A lot of activity going on at the White House that the President has been focused on,” CNN reported press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One during the flight to Tennessee.
Upon further questioning, she said, “Again, that’s not what the President is looking at. That’s not what he’s spending his time on. And I think that we have a lot bigger things going on in the country right now, certainly that the President is spending his time when it comes to policy.”
Back in March, “Roseanne” boasted record ratings for its two-part premiere, as about 17.7 million viewers watched the first episode, while 18.6 million tuned in for the second. Sanders confirmed to The New York Times Trump called the star to personally congratulate her on the “huge” numbers.
“He’s just happy for me. I’ve known him for many years and he’s done a lot of nice things for me,” Barr told Good Morning America of the call. “It was just a friendly conversation about work and television and ratings … he really understands ratings and how they measure things.”
