President Donald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of Jimmy Fallon over the late night host’s apology for interviewing Trump during the election campaign.
Trump spoke at a campaign rally in the gym of Airport High School in West Columbia, South Carolina on Monday night, blasting Fallon for apologizing for the September 2016 interview.
‘He’s lost, he looks like a lost soul,’ Trump said of the NBC host, calling him a ‘low-life’ with ‘no talent.’
‘What is it a year and a half, two years later? And he’s apologizing because he ‘humanized’ me, and he really hurt himself,’ Trump said during the rally to support South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster for re-election.
‘So I said ‘Jimmy you called me up after the show, and you said ‘Thank you for the incredible’, you called them monster ratings,’ Trump continued. ‘So I said to him today on social media, Jimmy be a man, just relax.’
On his show later Monday night, Fallon responded to the attacks, calling Trump his ‘number one fan’.
‘It’s crazy. The president went after me on Twitter. It’s pretty much the only thing I have in common with NFL players,’ Fallon said.
Trump ridiculed Jimmy Fallon during the rally to support South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster (right) for re-election
Fallon is seen on Monday outside of his New York City apartment. Trump said of the late-night host: ‘He’s lost, he looks like a lost soul.’
Trump also took shots at the other networks’ late-night funnymen, ridiculing Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.
‘I mean, honestly are these people funny? And I can laugh at myself,’ Trump said.
‘Frankly, if I couldn’t I’d be in big trouble. But there’s no talent. They’re not like talented people. Johnny Carson was talented,’ he continued, referencing the legendary host of NBC’s ‘Tonight Show’ from the 1960s to the early 1990s.
‘Some of these guys — no seriously, I mean, this guy on CBS has no talent,’ Trump added, a reference to ‘The Late Show’ host Colbert.
Trump also mocked Kimmel for eagerly greeting his car at the studio to open the door for him when he appeared on his ABC late night show.
Fallon recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he ‘made a mistake’ in his 2016 interview of Trump, in which he mussed up Trump’s hair, and would do it differently.
Fallon has been opening up about the personal anguish he felt following the backlash to his now-infamous hair messing appearance with Donald Trump
Trump opponents criticized Fallon for a cringeworthy interview only weeks before the election where Fallon playfully stroked Trump’s hair
President Donald Trump on Sunday attacked Jimmy Fallon over the Tonight Show host’s recent comments, in which Fallon became choked up talking about the grief he got after tussling Trump’s hair on his show
On Sunday, Trump tweeted: ‘@jimmyfallon is now whimpering to all that he did the famous ‘hair show’ with me (where he seriously messed up my hair), & that he would have now done it differently because it is said to have ‘humanized’ me-he is taking heat. He called & said ‘monster ratings.’ Be a man Jimmy!’
Trump opponents criticized Fallon for a cringeworthy interview only weeks before the election where Fallon playfully stroked Trump’s hair.
Fallon’s show eventually lost more than one-fifth of its audience and its late-night crown to Stephen Colbert’s new and more political The Late Show for CBS.
Fallon said in a Hollywood Reporter podcast that he wasn’t approving of Trump or his beliefs just because he joked with him: ‘I did not do it to ‘normalize’ him or to say I believe in his political beliefs or any of that stuff.’
The talk show host has discussed the episode before, explaining in a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair that he was just ‘trying to have fun’ with Trump, but revealed that he was ‘devastated’ to learn that people had a negative reaction.
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Airport High School in South Carolina
Fallon spoke of the toll that the period took on him and his Tonight Show colleagues. ‘It was definitely a down time,’ he said. ‘And it’s tough for morale.’
He also told The New York Times: ‘If I let anyone down, it hurt my feelings that they didn’t like it. I got it.’
But in the podcast, Fallon reveals the backstage fallout to the criticism that he had been too soft on Trump.
‘It’s tough for morale,’ he said. ‘You go, ‘Alright, we get it. I heard you. You made me feel bad. So now what? Are you happy? I’m depressed. Do you want to push me more? What do you want me to do? You want me to kill myself? What would make you happy? Get over it.”
He said he works hard and is one of the ‘good people,’ but faced a ‘gang-mentality’ online.
‘People just jump on the train, and some people don’t even want to hear anything else. They’re like, ‘No, you did that!’ You go, ‘Well, just calm down and just look at the whole thing and actually see my body of work.”
Late Sunday, Fallon responded by promising to make a donation in Trump’s name to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a charity providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families and refugees in Central and South Texas.
The nonprofit has gained visibility since the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy for immigrants and asylum seekers arriving at the Southern border.
Comedian and late night host Jimmy Fallon responded to President Trump’s tweet about him saying he would donate to an immigrant advocacy organization in the president’s name