When Donald Trump appeared on The Tonight Show in September and Jimmy Fallon seemingly normalized his racism by joking around and playing in his “hair,” the world wondered, “What would David Letterman do?”
Many people were pretty sure Letterman would have taken Trump’s ass to task not only for his policies but also for his inherent racism. But of course Fallon didn’t do any of that, because everything to Fallon is just a bucket of shits and giggles.
In an interview with Vulture’s David Marchese, Letterman put the theories to rest and spoke about how his interview would 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 … ’” Letterman said.
The former late night host said that as a talk show host, you have an obligation to take on Trump, and that’s definitely not what Fallon did. As for Letterman’s thoughts on Trump, he ended the interview with a few words of advice: “We don’t need more confirmation that there’s something wrong with Donald Trump. Let’s instead find ways to rebuild what is rational. And the Democrats, goddamn it, get a little backbone, get a little spine.”