Rosie O’Donnell sees a deep, underlying connection between disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein and President Trump, her foe in a war of words that has lasted more than a decade.

“White men in power are generally abusive to minorities and women. That’s a given, in my opinion,” O’Donnell tells USA TODAY during an interview about her new Showtime comedy, SMILF, due Nov. 5.

O’Donnell says Weinstein, fired from his film company after allegations of harassment and sexual assault, once called her a crude term for female genitalia, but says the more serious charges surprised her. (Weinstein has repeatedly denied having "non-consensual sex.")

“Everyone knew he was a creep and that he would try to hit on you — not me but other women," she says. But "I never in a million years imagined he was raping women. No woman ever said to me, ‘I was raped by Harvey.’ ”

O'Donnell says more needs to be done to deal with larger societal problems of sexism and racism.

“It’s in our culture. It’s not like a few women in positions of power is going to change it," she says. "As a nation, we have to understand that we should start with basic equality.”

O’Donnell, whose criticism of Trump while hosting The View in 2006 led to a decade-long battle of insults, says the back-and-forth with the future president illustrates a larger problem.

“Where someone like Trump could devalue, demean, slander, diminish and deride me for a decade with impunity, there was no national organization saying, ‘Stop that!’ There was no organization going, ‘Wow! This guy changed the narrative on that woman through a decade of relentless abuse. What was her crime? She told the truth about him when nobody was willing to,’ ” O’Donnell says. (She claimed he went bankrupt, which he denies, and labeled him a 'snake-oil salesman.')

O’Donnell says it hurt when, after Megyn Kelly confronted Trump at a 2015 presidential primary debate that he had referred to women he didn't like as "fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals," he replied, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

“Everyone laughed, and Megyn Kelly (didn't have) the feminist backbone that I or many others I know would have had. (I) would have stood up and challenged him on that." ("It was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell," Kelly replied at the debate.) "Only Rosie O’Donnell’ can become ‘Only fill-in-the-blank.’ And it’s become only fill-in-the-blank: Congresswomen, widows of dead servicemen, senators, anyone,” she says.

“He’s an abusive, brutal bully and his day is coming,” he says. “I think the world will stand and cheer.”