Rosie O’Donnell may be planning to keep the Trump hits coming when she guest-hosts Jimmy Kimmel Live! later this month, but one particular hit apparently won’t make it to air.
During a new appearance on Kara Swisher’s podcast, On with Kara Swisher, O’Donnell revealed that she’s been told she cannot perform “If He Only Had a Brain,” her Trump-themed rewrite of the song from The Wizard of Oz, during her upcoming week behind Kimmel’s desk.
“The song that I sang in my show—‘If He Only Had a Brain’—I wanted to do that on Kimmel, but they just told me I can’t,” O’Donnell said.
According to O’Donnell, she was told the show “couldn’t get permission for the parody because it’s political content.”
O’Donnell was quick to add that the decision did not come from Jimmy Kimmel himself. “It’s not Jimmy,” she said.
When Swisher invited her to perform part of the number on the podcast, O’Donnell obliged, singing the song’s first verse:
“His approval rate is 30. His diaper’s always dirty. I think the guy’s insane. Da, da, da, da, da, da. He ain’t no stable genius. Got a teeny, tiny penis, and he doesn’t have a brain.”
O’Donnell first shared a version of the song on TikTok in late July after watching Trump’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The full number also targets the president over the White House Reflecting Pool, his relationship with Vladimir Putin, and his tendency to fall asleep during meetings.
Although O’Donnell considers her song a parody, copyright law uses a narrower definition of the term. In its landmark 1994 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music decision, the Supreme Court distinguished between a parody that comments on the original work and a satire that borrows the work to comment on something else.
Because O’Donnell’s new lyrics target Trump rather than The Wizard of Oz, a network clearance department could view the song as satire and seek permission from the copyright holder rather than rely on a fair-use defense. That doesn’t automatically mean the performance would be unlawful—fair use is decided case by case—but it makes airing the song without a license considerably riskier.
There is some irony in the situation. “If I Only Had a Brain” lyricist Yip Harburg was himself an ardent leftist who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He’d almost certainly have relished a political send-up of his own tune—but his estate and the publisher still hold the keys.
O’Donnell is currently performing the song in her Off-Broadway one-woman show, Common Knowledge, which runs at New York’s Daryl Roth Theatre through August 8. She is scheduled to guest-host Jimmy Kimmel Live! the week of August 17—apparently with one fewer musical number than planned.
