Seth Meyers invited Trump to be show guest, but Trump wanted an apology first
DONALD Trump had remembered that Saturday evening in April, particularly the 2 minutes and 34 seconds Seth Meyers spent skewering him with joke after excoriating joke.
It was 2015 — four years after the White House correspondents’ dinner in which Trump had become Meyers’ verbal punching bag — and the comic ran into the billionaire at Rockefeller Center during the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary special.
Meyers told Politico he seized the moment to make an impromptu pitch: Trump should come on “Late Night.” They could bill the appearance as a conciliatory meeting four years after the not-so-good-natured ribbing in front of President Barack Obama and a ballroom full of snickering journalists.
Trump seemed amenable at the time, but later, Meyers told Politico, he made an intransigent demand: Apologise. Not a behind-the-scenes handshake, or a contrite text message, Meyers told Politico, but a public, on-air apology for making fun of Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner.
Meyers refused, Trump declined and the appearance never happened. The incident instead became the subject of coffee-table conversation and, perhaps, an insight into the mind of an aggrieved Trump.
The 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner may be best known as the day Obama got a bit of revenge at Trump, one of the loudest voices in the birther movement that claimed that the US president was not, in fact, a US citizen.
Obama quipped that, if elected, Trump would turn the White House into the “Trump White House Resort and Casino.” He said Trump, who flirted with the idea of running in the 2012 Republican primary, showed presidential leadership skills when he fired Gary Busey on “The Apprentice.” And, Obama said, now that he had released his birth certificate, Trump “could finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing; what really happened in Roswell.”
But before Obama lit into Trump, Meyers had worked him over, uttering the word “Trump” some 16 times, according to a transcript of the many jokes:
“Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”
“Gary Busey said recently that Donald Trump would make a great president. Of course he said the same thing about an old rusty bird cage that he found.”
“Donald Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant, which is great for Republicans since it will streamline their search for a vice president.”
“Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of white people I bet he is mistaken.”
Cutaways showed a stonefaced, unsmiling Trump enduring the fusillade. Years later, pundits wondered: Did that embarrassing night put Trump on a beeline trajectory to be the leader of the free world?
Trump had spoken about running for president as early as 1988, but many said the night of Meyers’ speech was a watershed moment.
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik wrote in September 2015 that he had been seated a few tables away from Trump in 2011.
“On that night, Trump’s own sense of public humiliation became so overwhelming that he decided, perhaps at first unconsciously, that he would, somehow, get his own back — perhaps even pursue the presidency after all, no matter how nihilistically or absurdly, and redeem himself,” Gopnik wrote.
Of course that pursuit would make him an even bigger target for whoever happened to be headlining the White House correspondents’ dinner.
This year it was Michelle Wolf, who followed in Meyers’ footsteps with a caustic diatribe directed at Trump.
On Thursday, less than two weeks after that, she’ll appear on Meyers’ show.