Q.
You featured Donald Trump on your programs many times over the years.
What perspective has that given you on his presidential candidacy?
A.
I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and I always thought he was
exactly what New York City needed to have: the big, blowhard
billionaire. “By God, I’m Donald Trump and I date models and I put up
buildings, and everything is gold.” Nobody took him seriously, and
people loved him when he would come on the show. I would make fun of his
hair, I would call him a slumlord, I would make fun of his ties. And he
could just take a punch like nothing. He was the perfect guest.
So now, he decides he’s running for president. And right out of the box,
he goes after immigrants and how they’re drug dealers and they’re
rapists. And everybody swallows hard. And they think, oh, well, somebody
will take him aside and say, “Don, don’t do that.” But it didn’t
happen. And then, I can remember him doing an impression,
behind a podium, of a reporter for The New York Times who has a
congenital disorder. And then I thought, if this was somebody else — if
this was a member of your family or a next-door neighbor, a guy at work —
you would immediately distance yourself from that person. And that’s
what I thought would happen. Because if you can do that in a national
forum, that says to me that you are a damaged human being. If you can do
that, and not apologize, you’re a person to be shunned.
I
kept telling people he will absolutely not get elected. And then David
Brooks said he’ll get the nomination and he will be crushed in the
general election. And I thought: Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going to
happen. I stand by that. The thing about Trumpy was, I think people just
were amused enough about him to keep him afloat in the polls, because
nobody wanted the circus to pull up and leave town.
How did you feel about the Clinton campaign using the “Late Show” video in an anti-Trump ad?
It
made me a wealthy man. [laughs, then seriously] I was flattered. I was
pleased. I felt like I still have a small voice in this. I thought it
was good. Slowly but surely, everybody got sucked into this vortex. “Did
you hear what Donald Trump said?” And everything downstream got worse
and worse. Poor Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets sucked into it,
and I’m thinking, Oh, don’t take the bait, ma’am. Then she says
so-and-so and she has to apologize. Kids, if you turn off the light, the
moths will stop coming.
Jimmy
Fallon seemed to try a different approach, by not even addressing
Trump’s controversies, and it got a negative reaction. How would you
handle Trump as a guest now?
If
I had a show, I would have gone right after him. I would have said
something like, “Hey, nice to see you. Now, let me ask you: what gives
you the right to make fun of a human who is less fortunate, physically,
than you are?” And maybe that’s where it would have ended. Because I
don’t know anything about politics. I don’t know anything about trade
agreements. I don’t know anything about China devaluing the yuan. But if
you see somebody who’s not behaving like any other human you’ve known,
that means something. They need an appointment with a psychiatrist. They
need a diagnosis and they need a prescription.
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