Letterman Says He Would’ve Ripped Into Trump If He Still Had A Late Night Show

David Letterman criticizes Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) on the March 31, 2015 episode of CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman."
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In an interview with the New York Times published Friday, former “Late Night” host David Letterman said he would have pressed Trump on his mocking of a reporter with a congenital disorder, if he was still on television.

“If I had a show, I would have gone right after him,” Letterman said, when asked about the heavily criticized interview that NBC late night host Jimmy Fallon did with the Republican nominee. In that interview, Fallon playfully tussled Trump’s hair but avoided tough questions about the campaign.

“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 said. “And maybe that’s where it would have ended.”

“Because I don’t know anything about politics,” he continued. “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.”

Letterman had been describing how Trump began his transition from “big, blowhard billionaire” to something more sinister before describing Trump’s mocking of Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition which affects the movement of his arms, as another turning point.

“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,” Letterman said. “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.”

Letterman said Trump remained popular during the Republican presidential primaries “because nobody wanted the circus to pull up and leave town,” and offered advice to those, like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who are tempted to scrap publicly with The Donald: “Kids, if you turn off the light, the moths will stop coming.”

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Notable Replies

  1. That’s what the op-ed pages of newspapers are for.

  2. Avatar for tamar tamar says:

    Trump is the guy at a party who’s so obnoxious that everyone finds a reason to get away from him. His policies are nothing short of confused, weird, senseless. His speeches are mainly bragging and insults. While I don’t like Pence and I thoroughly despise Cruz, I understand that some people support their views. What I don’t understand is why anyone supports Trump.

  3. Go, Dave! When you think about it, it’s bizarre how much Trump gets away with. He has the stamp of the GOP, a supposedly reason-based, respectable political organization, which actually no longer represents reasonable points of view, although the media covers it as if it deserves the same respect the reality-based and humane Dem party deserves.

    Realistically, media should be saying things like Dave suggested–what gives you the right to treat someone like that? And they should be saying, “We know that what you said is just not true, here’s the data or truth” and “That’s not what you said before, here’s the video.” And “That just makes no sense at all.”

    But he gets to put out this BS because of “balanced coverage.”

    Dave was curmudgeon who was occasionally a mensch. On politics, he refused to let the B.S. slide just to keep the fun going. Fallon’s playing cute with Trump was disgusting.

  4. Avatar for tamar tamar says:

    Did you see the time Rush Limbaugh was on his show? It was glorious!

  5. Man do I miss Dave. Will never forget his quip when McCain suspended his campaign as the '08 economic crisis hit. “Maybe he’s supsending the campaign because the poll numbers aren’t looking great? They’re putting something in his metamucil.”

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