by Frank Holmes, reporter
The rumors have circled for years… and this time, First Lady Melania Trump is tackling them head-on.
They began during her husband’s first run for president, and to her credit, Melania did not say a word. But now, she’s getting everything out in the open.
Like many rumors, this one was begun by one her husband’s most outspoken enemies.
In this case, it was Rosie O’Donnell, the has-been celebrity who has stoked her feud with former President Donald Trump for years.
After the former talk show host and one time hostess of The View saw Trump had defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, O’Donnell decided to go after the Trump family’s weakest point—their youngest son, Barron Trump.
Rosie O’Donnell and her Hollywood buddies started the story that Barron Trump was autistic–even though, at the time, Barron was just 10 years old.
As “proof,” O’Donnell tweeted out a video of Barron allegedly clapping without touching hands.
The seven-minute-long video also shows footage of Barron squirming in his seat during the 2016 Republican National Convention and jerking his eyes open during his father’s victory speech – at 3 o’clock in the morning late into election night.
The former daytime talk show host, who has an autistic daughter, claimed she posted the video to raise awareness of autism and posted the video with the hashtag”#StopTheBullying.”
She claimed “i tweeted from my heart,” so that the Trump family would know that “we r not alone, there r others living this too.”
But the video was bullying, critics fired back, who called O’Donnell “a vile bully.”
‘She’s a Vile Bully’: Rosie O’Donnell Faces Outrage After Suggesting Barron Trump Might be Autistic: https://t.co/iODIdHAdYY
— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) November 25, 2016
Melania didn’t say anything about the top directly, until now.
In her new memoirs, the First Lady agreed the online campaign against Barron became a case of online “bullying” triggered by “sheer malice.”
“Someone had painstakingly compiled the footage and added captions like, ‘His hands are moving erratically and aren’t touching each other. Then he was spotted making strange movements in his seat, typical of children with autism,’”she remembers.
“Barron’s experience of being bullied both online and in real life following the incident is a clear indication of the irreparable damage caused,” Melania Trump writes in the forthcoming book. “No apology can undo the harm inflicted upon him.”
It wasn’t that the Trump family has a problem with people who are autistic, she wrote; it’s just that Barron was and is not one of them.
“There is nothing shameful about autism (though O’Donnell’s tweet implied that there was), but Barron is not autistic,” the First Lady explains.
Melania explains she was “appalled by such cruelty.”
And she isn’t buying O’Donnell’s story about raising awareness of autism, ether.
“It was clear to me that she was not interested in raising awareness about autism. I felt that she was attacking my son because she didn’t like my husband,” she writes.
O’Donnell alleged that her video “had nothing to do with donald,” but the First Lady knows better.
The Horn has told you about this for years.
Rosie O’Donnell “actually started the feud with Trump in 2006, mocking his business sense, his marriages, and his hair,” this author wrote at the time here at The Horn. “Even though Rosie has also been divorced twice.”
“Rosie the Ridiculer could stand to spend a little more time worrying about her own children. O’Donnell has a troubled relationship with her oldest daughter, Chelsea. When she ran away from home last August, Rosie told reporters that the 19-year-old had a ‘mental illness’ and had stopped taking her meds. Chelsea said she suffers from depression – but she’s not mentally ill – and that she didn’t run away at all. Rosie, her loving adoptive mother, kicked her out of the house, she said.”
Meanwhile, The Horn noted that the Trump family’s law firm actually denied the allegations at the time.
“This law firm represents First Lady–elect Melania Trump and her 10-year-old son, Barron Trump. A video was posted at YouTube recently speculating that Barron might be autistic. He is not,” a lawyer with the Trump family’s law firm—Harder Mirell & Abrams LLP in Los Angeles—told US Weekly. “The video includes the hashtag ‘StopTheBullying’ but yet the video itself is bullying by making false statements and speculation about a 10-year-old boy for the purpose of harassing him and his parents.”
“The video regarding Barron Trump has been removed, and the person who posted it has retracted it and apologized for it, at the same YouTube page,” the firm said.
That hasn’t happened — but at least Melania has now set the record straight and defended her 18-year-old young adult as he begins his own life.