Letterman explains exactly how he would take down Donald Trump in a fiery new interview.
“Letterman has no love for ‘damaged’ Trump,” reads the title from a David Letterman interview published Friday by The New York Times.
As The New York Times reports, “Letterman, 69, had an especially feisty relationship with Donald J. Trump, who had been a frequent guest and sparring partner since the 1980s.”
This was a time that Letterman looked back on fondly.
“I always thought he was exactly what New York City needed to have: the big, blowhard billionaire,” the retired Late Show host told The New York Times, adding “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.”
However, as The New York Times reports in the preface to their interview excerpts, “Now Mr. Letterman says that Mr. Trump is no longer a laughing matter. In an interview on Wednesday to discuss his involvement in the National Geographic Channel series ‘Years of Living Dangerously,’ which examines environmental problems around the world, Mr. Letterman spoke about his evolving thoughts on the Republican nominee and why he considers him ‘a damaged human being’ and ‘a person to be shunned.'”
As Vanity Fair reports: “the majority of Trump’s late-night interviews have hewed more closely to Jimmy Fallon’s infamously chummy September Trump chat—a batting cage filled with softballs that culminated in Fallon impishly mussing Trump’s hair.” However, Letterman tells The New York Times that Trump is someone to be “shunned.”
Asked his perspective on Trump’s campaign after years of featuring him on his show, Letterman responded:
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.
Asked how he would handle Trump if he still had a show, Letterman responded: “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?'”
Letterman added that Trump needs “an appointment with a psychiatrist” to get a “diagnosis” and “a prescription.”
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.
On the bright side, Letterman stands by his prediction that Trump will lose the general election in November.
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.
FEATURED IMAGE: By Pete Souza – http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/images/letterman_laugh_ps9414.jpg, Public Domain, Link
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