‘Everything here is just better': Ellen DeGeneres confirms she moved to the UK because of Donald Trump
At a conversation event on Sunday at Cheltenham's Everyman theatre – the comedian's first public appearance since leaving the US – broadcaster Richard Bacon asked DeGeneres if it was true Trump had spurred her decision to relocate.
'Yes,' she said. 'We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, 'He got in.' And we're like, 'We're staying here.''
DeGeneres moved with her wife, Portia de Rossi, to a house in the Cotswolds in 2024 after her long-running talkshow ended and she embarked on a 'final comedy tour' around the US.
At the time, her move was described as permanent. A source told industry publication The Wrap that DeGeneres was 'never coming back' and was motivated by Trump, though DeGeneres herself had not confirmed the reasoning until now.
DeGeneres told Bacon that her new home was 'beautiful'.
'It's clean,' she raved. 'Everything here is just better – the way animals are treated, people are polite. I just love it here.'
She also expressed concern for LGBTQ+ rights in the US, hinting that she and De Rossi may get married again in the UK.
'The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage,' DeGeneres said, referencing an overwhelming vote by southern Baptists in June to endorse a resolution that would seek to overturn same-sex marriage in the US.
'They're trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it,' DeGeneres continued. 'Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we're going to get married here.'
Later in the talk, she added, 'I wish we were at a place where it was not scary for people to be who they are. I wish that we lived in a society where everybody could accept other people and their differences. So until we're there, I think there's a hard place to say we have huge progress.'
At the event, DeGeneres also addressed the scandal that had dogged the end of her daytime talkshow Ellen after 19 seasons in 2022.
In 2020, former employees accused DeGeneres of fostering a toxic work environment. She apologised to her staff and to the audience, and an internal investigation by parent company Warner led to the departure of three executives – but the show never quite recovered and ended amid declining ratings.
Related: Ellen DeGeneres walks away from her talkshow empire and leaves behind a mixed legacy
DeGeneres had previously commented on the controversy in her 2024 US tour, saying she was 'kicked out of show business' for being 'mean'.
On Sunday, she made similar comments on stage. 'No matter what, any article that came up, it was like, 'She's mean',' DeGeneres said. 'How do I deal with this without sounding like a victim or 'poor me' or complaining? But I wanted to address it.'
She said she had been misconstrued. 'I'm a direct person, and I'm very blunt, and I guess sometimes that means that ... I'm mean?'
DeGeneres concluded that it was 'certainly an unpleasant way to end' her talkshow.
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The Hill
9 hours ago
- The Hill
Why Democrats keep losing: Too many Baptists, not enough bootleggers
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The alliance between the Baptists and the bootleggers helped lead to Sunday closing laws all over the country. In 1983, the economist Bruce Yandle argued that Baptist-bootlegger-style alliances are often crucial to regulatory action. Yandle urged that some people are motivated by a moral concern, while others seek to promote their economic self-interest. Often they need each other. When Baptists (understood as the moralists) and bootleggers (understood as the economic interests in the background) form an alliance, they can move the regulatory state in their preferred directions. But we can go much further than Yandle did. Baptist-bootlegger alliances extend far beyond regulation. They move modern political life. Remember the controversy over the destruction of the ozone layer? You don't hear a whole lot about it today. The reason is the Montreal Protocol, which largely solved the problem. 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Natural gas companies were the bootleggers, supportive of many of those same regulations to give them a competitive advantage against coal companies. We should even think of these as alliances between green, meaning environmentalists, and green, meaning the color of money. Here's another example: Some environmentalists have favored mandatory labels on food containing genetically modified organisms. They were joined by organic food companies, whose products do not contain such organisms, and which hoped that such labels would give them an economic advantage. After a series of frustrating failures, this particular Baptist-bootlegger alliance ultimately succeeded in 2016 when Congress enacted a labeling requirement. The simplest coalitions between Baptists and bootleggers arise when some people have intense moral concerns and others are motivated by pure self-interest. But there are more complicated variations. 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As just one example, consider his support for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which has strong moral justifications (it helps the working poor) and is also appreciated by many businesses (because the government helps pay for their workers). As I saw up close, President Obama knew all about Baptists and bootleggers. He worked hard to ensure that his fuel economy standards would be supported by the nation's automobile companies. He worked even harder to get support for the Affordable Care Act not only from people who supported it on moral grounds but also from major insurers (which liked the law's expansion in coverage, alongside its subsidies for low-income people) and from pharmaceutical companies (which knew that expanded coverage would increase the demand for prescription drugs). Right now, contemporary Democrats are in the midst of identifying their policy priorities for coming years. They have a host of Baptists. They should be focusing intensely on this question: Who are their bootleggers? Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and author of ' On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom,' forthcoming in September.
New York Times
13 hours ago
- New York Times
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Are Selling Their Country Estate
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Yahoo
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