A decade ago, as NBC points out, O’Donnell helped to mainstream a now-popular line of attack against Trump—that he’s not self-made but a product of his father, that he repeatedly bankrupted himself to get out of paying what he owed, that he’s a “snake-oil salesman.”

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Trump didn’t take this so well, and has since referred to O’Donnell as “a woman out of control,” a “true loser,” a “total train wreck,” “disgusting,” a “slob,” “fat, ugly”; he told Entertainment Tonight in 2006: “Probably I’ll sue her, it’ll be fun. I’d like to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets.” He made similar threats to People, saying “I’ll most likely sue her for making those false statements—and it’ll be fun. Rosie’s a loser. A real loser. I look forward to taking lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie.” (He did not.)

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In a 2014 interview with People, O’Donnell called Trump’s attacks “the most bullying I ever experienced in my life, including as a child.”

“It was national, and it was sanctioned societally,” she said. “Whether I deserved it is up to your own interpretation.”

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Unfortunately, Trump seems unlikely to stop bringing up Rosie O’Donnell. She is, in effect, his boogeyman. The particular digs she lobbed at him a decade ago, back when his defective personality was not a topic of lasting national interest, triggered him immensely; not only because they poked at the foundation of his brand, but because they were floated by a woman, and one he did not find attractive. The fact that anyone listened must have absolutely confounded him.

Ever since Trump began to seek our nation’s highest office, these criticisms have snowballed into something rather inescapable, as we finally witnessed in last night’s meltdown—and now, they are coming from another woman, one whose physical presence, or lack of “stamina,” also scans to Trump as a disqualifying factor.

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It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that Trump might consider Rosie O’Donnell, rather than his own actions, to be the root of any criticism he receives today. If he can just bring her up enough, and remind us how gross and messy she is, we will discount the things she said about him and everything that’s been said since, and the universe will slip right back into tremendous normalcy.

Correction: This post previously misspelled Liza Minnelli’s name.