David Letterman Weighs In On Fallon's Controversial Trump Interview: 'I Would Have Gone Right After Him'

David Letterman would not have run his fingers through Donald Trump’s hair.

In an interview with the New York Times, the late-night icon was asked about Jimmy Fallon’s softball treatment of Trump during the Republican presidential nominee’s visit to the Tonight Show last month.

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“If I had a show, I would have gone right after him,” he told the Times, adding that he would have specifically taken Trump to task for mocking the physical disability of reporter Serge Kovalesk, who suffers from a congenital joint condition. “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?’ 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.”

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Letterman went on to characterize POTUS Candidate Trump as a “damaged human being,” which is a far cry from the relatively harmless version of Trump he invited onto his talk shows in the past. “I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and I always thought he was exactly what New York City needed to have: the big, blowhard billionaire,” he said. “’By God, I’m Donald Trump and I date models and I put up buildings, and everything is gold.’ 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.

“So now, he decides he’s running for president,” Letterman continued. “And 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’ll take him aside and say, ‘Don, don’t do that.’ But it didn’t happen.”

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