Rosie O’Donnell Calls Out ‘Mean’ Kelly Ripa While Addressing ‘Weird Feud’ In ‘The View’ Tell-All

*Sips tea.* In an excerpt from Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View — obtained by In Touch — Rosie O’Donnell calls out Kelly Ripa for being “mean” to Clay Aiken and details their feud.

In November 2006, the American Idol alum guest cohosted on Live With Regis and Kelly, and immediately, there was tension between him and the blonde beauty, 48. In the middle of an interview, he put his hand over Kelly’s mouth and she said, “I don’t know where that’s been, honey!”

The comedian, 57, addressed Kelly’s “homophobic” comment the next day on The View. “If that was a straight man, if that was a cute man, if that was a guy she didn’t question his sexuality, she would’ve said a different thing,” she said. However, the New Jersey native wasn’t having it and told Rosie that what she said was “downright outrageous.”

In the tell-all book, written by Ramin Setoodeh, Rosie explained to the author why she defended the singer in the first place. A few days before his appearance on The View, Clay cried to Rosie and contemplated whether or not he should come out as a gay man. “I sat down with him and I talked to him,” she explained. “There had been a scandal by this time of the army man, or whatever, website he was on. He was inching his way out in the way so many born-again southern Christians have to. I hugged him. Not only do I feel the twenty-years-older mother thing, I feel the twenty-years-old younger-gay thing. So, I had just held a crying boy and then watched him be gay bashed by Kelly Ripa.”

The “Invisible” crooner remembers that day a little differently, though. “I didn’t see it the same way that she did,” he said. “The truth is she outed me in a way, because I had not been out yet. When she said the words, ‘If that was a straight man,’ she was confirming that she knew that I wasn’t. That was the worst day of my life. I don’t think I’d had a moment more devastating to me. I remember feeling like s—t that day and totally deflated. But I definitely wasn’t mad at her.”

Meanwhile, to this day, Rosie and Kelly do not have a good relationship. “I think Kelly Ripa is mean and she doesn’t like me, and she has never wanted to discuss what happened,” the SMILF actress said. “She wanted to have this weird feud. I see her at concerts sometimes. She just looks away.”

Uhhh … awkward, much?