Rosie O’Donnell returns to ‘The View’ and things get awkward

Rosie O’Donnell returned to her old stamping grounds on “The View” on Friday and before her hour was up, the outspoken former moderator got into an awkward moment with Barbara Walters.

O’Donnell, who was back on the show for the first time since 2007, was asked near the end of the program if she missed the platform of a daily TV show. O’Donnell said she did miss it, but added that she didn’t miss the backlash if she said something people disagreed with or weren’t ready to hear, “Your Twitter feed blows up.”

O’Donnell added, “People can be very mean online.”

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“I went through that just this week,” Walters added. Earlier in the week she had voiced her support for director Woody Allen, who has been the basis of much speculation after Dylan Farrow, the daughter he adopted with former partner Mia Farrow, accused him publicly of molesting her when she was 7 years old.

O’Donnell knew exactly which moment she was referring to.

“With the Woody thing?” O’Donnell said. “I saw it.”

She added, “It’s hard. Especially for people who had been abused, it’s very hard to hear somebody who has come out, which takes such courage, and admit the abuse, and then be disbelieved.”

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“OK, I don’t want to go through the whole argument again,” Walters said, visibly annoyed.

“We can edit that right out,” O’Donnell suggested. “No one will know.”

“No, we don’t edit,” Walters said. “We leave it in. That’s why the show is called ‘The View.’ We’re not afraid. That’s what we do.”

“Whatever she says, she knows I love you,” Walters said to close the show, patting O’Donnell’s arm.

Earlier in the same program, O’Donnell had participated in the “Hot Topics” portion of the show, which frequently landed her name in the news back when she would spar with then-co-panelist Elisabeth Hasselbeck. One of the first topics mentioned was the Dylan Farrow op-ed in the New York Times.

O’Donnell was forthright in her support of Farrow, telling the panel, “I totally believe her.”

“I’m very close friends with Mia Farrow... She’s the best mother I’ve ever seen,” O’Donnell added.

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