You know who wouldn't have totally blown it on The Tonight Show by grossly tousling Trump's hair? David Fucking Letterman. In an expansive new interview with Vulture's David Marchese, the former Late Show god said an election season interview with Trump would have gone much differently if he had been at the helm.
"I think you have an obligation," Letterman said of the responsibility of comedians and late-night hosts in Trumpland. Addressing the Fallon fuckery, Letterman brought up an old Neil Armstrong "doesn't want to talk about the moon" joke while slyly outlining how that now-infamous Trump interview should have gone. "I don't want to criticize Jimmy Fallon, but I can only tell you what I would have done in that situation," he said. "I would have gone to work on Trump. But the thing about it is, you don't have to concoct a complicated satirical premise to joke about Donald Trump. It's not, 'Two guys walk into a bar …'"
But that doesn't mean Letterman is spending his post-Late Show years obsessing over the current late-night output. "I don't watch any of it," he toldVulture. "I don't watch my old show. I will see clips now and stuff. I was at a thing the other night and so was Lorne Michaels. This guy is now the prince of New York. People are waiting in line to thank him for what he's doing to Trump. He's given us a little breathing room. He's loosened the noose. And the scary goddamn thing is that Don would like that not to be the case."
Alec Baldwin's Saturday Night Live Trump portrayal, Letterman said, deserves a medal. "Comedy's one of the ways that we can protect ourselves," Letterman said. "Alec Baldwin deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sadly, he's not going to get it from this president."
Letterman had plenty more to say about the rise of Trump, all of which can be read right here.
