Late night host Seth Meyers said President Trump wanted him to apologize on-air for making fun of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Meyers invited Trump to appear on his “Late Night” show in 2015, just a few months after the business mogul launched his presidential campaign, according to a Politico interview published Tuesday.
{mosads}According to Meyers, Trump refused to make the appearance unless Meyers publicly apologized on-air for making fun of Trump while acting as the gala’s entertainer four years earlier.
Meyers famously joked about the possibility of a Trump presidential campaign and his hair at the 2011 dinner.
“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,” Meyers said in 2011.
The request reportedly came through Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who pitched the appearance as a way for Meyers to make amends after the harsh comedy monologue.
Neither the White House nor Cohen responded to Politico’s request for comment.
Meyers said he was struck by how much his performance at the correspondents’ dinner appeared to bother Trump.
Even after this year’s dinner last month, Trump brought up Meyers’s “weak performance” in a tweet blasting this year’s entertainer, Michelle Wolf.
That complaint “makes me feel good,” Meyers told Politico.
Throughout the campaign and Trump’s presidency, Meyers and other late-night hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon have been using Trump material for their shows.
“[Trump] turned himself into an object of ridicule,” Meyers said. “This is a case of judo, where you’re using someone else’s momentum against them. It’s not like we’re attacking. We’re just sort of like steering his weight and letting him take himself down.”