Rosie O'Donnell took to TikTok on Tuesday to air her disappointment over the sexual misconduct allegations that ended Eric Swalwell's political career, declaring in a video that "men suck" and comparing the former Democratic congressman to Bill Clinton, two men she once championed.
Swalwell, who had been one of the leading contenders in California's 2026 gubernatorial race, announced Sunday that he would suspend his campaign. Two days later, on Monday, he said he would also resign from Congress amid multiple sexual misconduct allegations that have spurred at least two local criminal investigations, Fox News Digital reported. Swalwell denied all the allegations but admitted to making mistakes.
O'Donnell, who fled the United States after President Donald Trump's 2024 election and now resides in Ireland, used the occasion not just to lament Swalwell's fall, but to offer a broader indictment of the men she has publicly supported over the years. The irony was thick: a vocal progressive who once touted Swalwell's moral courage now admitting she doesn't "believe in anyone."
In her video, O'Donnell opened by asking her followers directly about the scandal.
"Now can we talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell? I know that guy."
She described a personal connection to the California Democrat, saying she had spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, donated money to him, and talked about him favorably in public appearances years ago. She recalled praising "his cute little family and two kids" and admiring him for standing up to political opponents over what she characterized as their "moralist behavior."
Then came the gut punch, her own words.
"And then all this comes out about him, and it's heartbreaking to me. You know? And I wrote him. I wrote him a little message and I said, 'You know, Bill Clinton broke my heart, and now you did too.'"
The Clinton comparison is worth pausing on. O'Donnell volunteered it herself, placing Swalwell in the same category as a former president whose own sexual misconduct scandals defined a generation of Democratic excuse-making. Clinton's office did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment.
O'Donnell then delivered what she framed as her conclusion.
"You know the conclusion I've come to? Men suck."
O'Donnell went further in the video, turning philosophical about the nature of public figures. She said Swalwell's downfall "teaches you not to believe in anyone."
"For me, that's what it does for me. I don't believe in anyone. People have images and they sell themselves as one thing, but they're not that thing. They have complications like all humans do, right? They have addictions, they have impulses, they have frontal lobe disorder, they have narcissism, they have a spoiled privileged upbringing that warps their perspective."
That's a striking admission from someone who spent years publicly vouching for Swalwell and his brand of combative progressive politics. O'Donnell was not just a casual fan. She donated money. She promoted him. She celebrated his image as a family man who held others to moral account.
And yet the lesson she draws is not that she misjudged a specific politician, but that all men are the problem. The sweeping generalization lets the ideology off the hook entirely. No reckoning with the party apparatus that elevated Swalwell. No reflection on why the same political movement that lectures the country about accountability keeps producing figures who fail its own stated standards.
The Swalwell video also marked a kind of return to public commentary for O'Donnell, who left the country after the 2024 election. She now lives in Ireland. But her exile has not been as total as she initially suggested.
In a mid-February interview on SiriusXM's "Cuomo Mornings" with Chris Cuomo, O'Donnell revealed she had quietly been back in the United States for two weeks without telling anyone.
"I just went to see my family. I wanted to see how hard it would be for me to get in and out of the country. I wanted to feel what it felt like. I wanted to hold my children again. And I hadn't been home in over a year."
She said she "wanted to make sure that it was safe" for her and her daughter to come back over the summer. Safe from what, exactly, she did not specify, though the context of her departure after Trump's election made the implication clear enough.
The quiet trip home undercuts the drama of the original departure. If you can slip in and out of the country for two weeks to visit family without incident, the danger you fled may have been overstated.
The speed of Swalwell's political collapse deserves its own attention. He went from leading gubernatorial contender to resigned congressman in roughly forty-eight hours. On Sunday, the campaign suspension. On Monday, the resignation from Congress, a seat he held for what Fox News described as 13 years.
The allegations against him have prompted at least two local criminal investigations. Swalwell denied all the accusations but acknowledged making mistakes, a formulation familiar to anyone who has watched political scandals unfold. The gap between a flat denial and a concession of "mistakes" is where careers go to die.
Fox News Digital reported that a representative for Swalwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
O'Donnell's video is revealing, but not in the way she intends. She positions herself as a victim of misplaced trust, heartbroken, disillusioned, forced to conclude that men as a category are the problem. But the pattern she describes is not about gender. It is about a political class that markets itself on moral superiority and then fails to meet its own benchmarks.
Swalwell built a career berating political opponents over their conduct. O'Donnell cheered him on. Now she compares him to Bill Clinton, another man whose party spent decades minimizing his behavior while lecturing everyone else about decency.
The common thread is not that "men suck." The common thread is that a movement built on moral posturing keeps getting caught by its own contradictions. O'Donnell donated to Swalwell, promoted him, praised his family image. She did the same with Clinton's political legacy. Both times, she was let down. Both times, she blamed the individual, or the entire male sex, rather than asking whether the political culture she supports has a pattern of elevating exactly this kind of figure.
That question is harder. It requires looking inward rather than posting a TikTok.
O'Donnell says she doesn't believe in anyone anymore. Fair enough. But if you keep picking the same kind of hero and keep getting the same result, at some point the problem isn't just the heroes.