Roseanne Barr isn’t racist — even though she said senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like if the “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” And neither is President Donald Trump, by the way.
That’s what Barr explained in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity, where the actress and ardent Trump supporter gave a rambling non-apology for the racist tweet she posted about Jarrett at the end of May.
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Roseanne has already apologized several times (and also blamed her erratic behavior on sleep aid Ambien). Still, Hannity devoted his Thursday show to giving Barr a chance to clear the air after she lost the reboot of her show, “Roseanne”, on ABC because of the tweet.
Barr went off about how her comments had nothing to do with race and instead focused on Jarrett’s involvement with the Iran Deal. The actress continued to refuse to acknowledge that she had said anything racist. She said she didn’t even know Jarrett was African-American. Her skin tone, Barr insisted, is the same as her own.
“You could have knocked me over with a feather when they said she was African-American,” she said. “I thought she was Middle Eastern.”
READ: A short history of people tweeting on Ambien and not being racist
Hannity pressed Barr on what she would say to Jarrett if she had the opportunity to apologize.
“Let’s talk about it,” Roseanne said. “Let’s really turn this into a teachable moment. We need to talk about race and everything that’s connected to it, including not knowing that someone who looks like me — her skin tone is like mine, and I’m brown — I didn’t know she was African-American.”
Just days before appearing on Hannity, Barr posted a crazy video to YouTube in which she yelled, while smoking a cigarette: “I thought the bitch was white!”
Barr also rambled on to Hannity about how Jarrett and Obama don’t like American exceptionalism — she said they had a “globalist way of thinking” — and ranted about how Iran isn’t a free society. She also touched on Trump.
“I’m not a racist, and the people who voted for Trump, they’re not racist either, and Trump isn’t a racist, sorry,” she said.
Throughout the interview, Barr also seemed to blame Jarrett for being sensitive to her remarks, instead of owning up to them.
“I’m so sorry that you thought I was racist, and that you thought my tweet was racist. Because it wasn’t; it was political,” she rambled. “I’m sorry that you feel harmed and hurt. I never meant that. And for that I apologize. I never meant to harm or hurt anybody.”
Barr also confirmed, yet again, that she was on Ambien and had drunk two beers when she sent the tweet.
Jarrett, for her part, appeared on ABC’s “The View” on Wednesday, where she said she wasn’t planning on watching Roseanne’s interview.
Cover image: Roseanne Barr adjusts her hair as she talks with Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity while being interviewed during a taping of his show, Thursday, July 26, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
