Ellen DeGeneres is being hammered in the United Kingdom after suggestions she can't stand the concept of another dreary British winter — and is contemplating returning to Trump's America.
DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi arrived in the UK last year, setting up home in the idyllic Cotswolds just before Donald Trump won the election. After the election, they said they "weren't going back" and would stay on the "saner side of the Atlantic," The Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi wrote.
But after just one winter, they're suggesting life under Trump is preferable to the grey chill of an English winter.
"It’s easy to be upbeat during a British summer, when all is green and pleasant," wrote the columnist. "Now that the winter gloom has set in, however, rumour has it that the fairweather Brits are plotting a return to Trumpland."
She went on, "I understand being homesick, but you lose a bit of street cred if you flee creeping fascism only to run straight back to it because you’re not used to being a bit chilly."
DeGeneres and De Rossi aren't alone in their wavering commitment, she wrote. Courtney Love, residing in London since 2019, plans to obtain British citizenship, describing the US political landscape as "frightening." Rosie O'Donnell relocated her family to Ireland, citing concerns for her non-binary child's safety — and sparking a bitter feud with the president.
Some genuinely should leave the U.S. because of a real threat, wrote Mahdawi.
"Meanwhile, some experts in authoritarianism see the writing on the wall and are packing their bags. 'We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US,' the headline of a video op-ed three Yale professors made for the New York Times earlier this year read before they left for Canada.
"A chilling message indeed. But nothing compared with a damp winter in the Cotswolds."