Donald Trump responded to his ban from Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday, saying in a statement that Meyers has “begged” him to come on the show for years but that he has “emphatically” refused.
“He has begged me to do the show for the last two years. I have told him emphatically, ‘No,'” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said in a statement released by his campaign. “I only like doing shows with good ratings, which as everybody knows, I only make better (by a lot).”
During Tuesday night’s episode of Late Night, Meyers said that Trump would no longer be allowed on his NBC program as long as the Washington Post was unable to cover the candidate’s campaign events. The Trump campaign revoked the Post‘s press credentials after the newspaper suggested in an article that he had tied President Obama to Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen during a national security-focused speech on Monday.
“We here at Late Night believe in freedom of the press and have therefore decided to stand in solidarity with them,” Meyers said Tuesday night. “So long as the Washington Post is banned from Donald Trump’s campaign, Donald Trump will be banned from ever coming on this show. You missed out, buddy… We could have driven around together while you yelled out the window at immigrants in Carpool Scary-oke.”
Meyers also accused the GOP presidential hopeful of “stoking fear and spreading hate.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kygQLLhos5k
Late-night hosts were particularly aggressive in going after Trump this week. Also on Tuesday night, The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert drew a swastika on a chalkboard in a skit after accusing Trump of “fear-mongering” and “self-aggrandizing.”
Trump does not shy away from returning fire when celebrities or media personalities criticize or threaten him.
In April, in response to statements from celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg and Lena Dunham that they would leave the country if Trump were elected, the candidate told Fox and Friends in an interview that he would doing the country “a great service” if “B-actor” Dunham and her associates followed through on the threat.
In May, Trump hit back at George Clooney, who had predicted at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival in France that “there’s not going to be a President Trump.”
“As far as George Clooney is concerned, let’s put it this way — he’s no Cary Grant,” the candidate said then.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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