Jimmy Fallon reveals personal pain following Trump fallout
NEW YORK — Jimmy Fallon is opening up about the personal anguish he felt following the backlash to his now-infamous hair mussing appearance with Donald Trump.
The host of “The Tonight Show” tells The Hollywood Reporter he “made a mistake” and apologized “if I made anyone mad.” He adds that he “would do it differently” looking back on the Sept. 15, 2016 episode.
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.”