celebs who can’t stand Donald Trump. Previously, O’Neill showed support for Barack Obama when he was in office, but stopped short of gushing over the then-POTUS. “I personally think Obama’s doing a pretty good job. Then again, I don’t follow it every day,” O’Neill told Capital and Main in November 2014, adding that he was impressed that Osama bin Laden was killed during Obama’s time in office. Meanwhile, the TV veteran was far more impassioned when speaking about Trump.
During a YouTube interview with David Pepper in September 2022, O’Neill went scorched earth when discussing how the former president would have been treated in O’Neill’s hometown of Youngstown, Ohio. “You got a pretty good idea of what this guy [Trump] was like pretty fast, which is all bulls***,” he said. The “Married… with Children” star said nobody would get along with Trump in Youngstown. “They’d just laugh at him, you know for being the braggart, the arrogant liar,” O’Neill said. The character assault on the one-time POTUS did not stop there. “Taken care of by his daddy. A guy who never really worked hard in his life,” O’Neill added.
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O’Neill’s incendiary words led to some people supporting him in the comment section, while pro-Trumpsters voiced their displeasure. That was only part of the actor’s character assassination of the former president, as O’Neill also brought up an embarrassing fact about one of Trump’s golf courses.
Ed O’Neill called out this fake claim
During his YouTube interview with David Pepper in September 2022, Ed O’Neill mentioned a plaque on the course of Donald Trump’s Northern Virginia Trump National Golf Club which claimed to be the site of the civil war Blood River Battle, and was signed by Trump himself. “Only one problem; there was never any such battle. He made it up,” the “Dutch” star said. “It’s the smallest things that tip you off as to [how] this guy is nuts.”
The inaccuracies of the plaque O’Neill referred to have been well-documented. In November 2015, The New York Times ran a piece investigating the golf course plaque which was located between holes 14 and 15. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood,’” the plaque read. Contrary to those lofty claims, experts disagreed that the battle described even took place. “No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,” Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association told the outlet. When Trump was presented with the plaque’s incongruences by The Times he decided to double down. “[I]f people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot,” he told the publication. Trump also bashed the history experts. “How would they know that? Were they there?”
A couple years after openly speaking out against him, Ed O’Neill showed he was a celeb who was still anti-Trump in 2024.
Why Ed O’Neill gave back his honorary degree
Ed O’Neill was dismayed when he found out that republican U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson was hired as the next president of his alma mater Youngstown State University. Johnson was an outspoken ally of Donald Trump, and an election denier. “I’ve got a doctorate from YSU, an honorary doctorate that I’m going to give back,” the actor told Ideastream Public Media in November 2023. “I’m going to start calling it Trump-U.”
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A couple months later, O’Neill had not cooled down and was still upset over the Johnson hiring. The man who played Al Bundy was dead set on returning his honorary YSU doctorate. “If the university would do a thing like this, it’s a slap in the face to all of us,” O’Neill said appearing on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” in January. The show’s host pointed out that Johnson aligned himself with Trump, who was under multiple criminal investigations at the time. That prompted O’Neill to mention Trump had faced allegations of sexual abuse as well. O’Neill added that he wanted to return his YSU degree in a way that would make a statement.
True to his words, O’Neill handed over his honorary doctorate to the Community Concerned for the Future of YSU in May. That group lit the degree on fire while protesting Johnson’s hiring. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, this kind of action is an absolute must,” a member of the group said while burning O’Neill’s degree, per Mahoning Matters.