Joanne Rogers, Mr. Rogers’ Widow, Has Had Enough Of Donald Trump: ‘He’s Just A Horrible Person’

Children’s entertainer and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood host Fred Rogers was a registered Republican, but “he was very independent in the way he voted… He just didn’t talk about it because he didn’t want to lose the children.” That’s according to his wife Joanne, who also used to keep quiet about politics. But then Trump was elected president, and as she said in 2019, “I want to vote for whoever is going to beat Trump.”

Joanne has become even more outspoken this year, in the midst of a pandemic that the Trump administration has spectacularly bungled and with two months to go until a contentious presidential election. “I’m alone now,” she told the Daily Beast (Fred died in 2003). “I don’t do a program for children. I think [Trump’s] just a horrible person.”

If Trump is re-elected president over Democratic nominee Joe Biden, “I will probably go into mourning,” Joanna said. “I can’t even imagine. I would feel so badly.” She also called him “pathologically ill,” “mentally ill,” and if he ever tells the truth, “it’s just a fluke, I think. But the fact [is] that I can’t believe anything he says, not even the simplest thing.”

And now we await the inevitable tweet-storm against Mister Rogers.