In the years before New York City mogul Donald Trump was elected as president, he appeared more than 30 times on David Letterman's late night shows, but the talk show host now says he wants to talk to the "real Donald Trump."
"I think he just liked being on TV," Letterman, now the host of Netflix's "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction," said in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter's "Awards Chatter" podcast. "I had no sense that he was the soulless bastard that he's turned into."
When told how many times Trump had appeared on his programs, NBC's "Late Night With David Letterman" (1982-1993) and CBS' "The Late Show With David Letterman" (1993-2015), Letterman exclaimed "More than 30? Wow! You're welcome, America."
Letterman added that people ask him if he'd like to speak to Trump now, and he said he would like to talk to the president and find out "what the hell went wrong," even if their conversation isn't recorded.
"I would just like to say, 'Don, it's Dave. Remember me? I want to talk to the real Donald Trump,'" said Letterman. "Because I now don't know which is the real Donald Trump, and if the Donald Trump that I was talking to [back then] was the real Donald Trump, how do you get to be the guy he is now? Politics notwithstanding — let's just say everything is great and he's done a great job, but he still behaves the way he behaves — who behaves like that?!"
Letterman said the Trump who appeared on his programs was "kind of like the boob of New York that pretended to be wealthy, or we thought was wealthy, and now he's just a psychotic. Is that putting too fine a point on it?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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