Jimmy Fallon regrets not addressing Trump interview after backlash

After his notorious interview with Donald Trump on the election trail, Jimmy Fallon kept silent.

Now, over 100 days into Trump's presidency, Fallon spoke with The New York Times about that infamous bout of hair-tousling.

“I didn’t talk about it, and I should have talked about it,” he said. “I regret that.”

Fallon's interview was immediately torn apart by fans and media outlets, and the late-night host never responded to concerns that he was normalizing and trivializing the threat of Trump.

“I didn’t do it to humanize him,” Fallon told the Times. “I almost did it to minimize him. I didn’t think that would be a compliment: ‘He did the thing that we all wanted to do.’”

“I’m a people pleaser,” he added later in the interview. “If there’s one bad thing on Twitter about me, it will make me upset. So, after this happened, I was devastated. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just trying to have fun.”

The article also dives into Fallon's bubbly persona and where it fits into the current politically charged entertainment scene — a scene in which Stephen Colbert is regularly besting Fallon in viewers during the same time slot. The Times interviewed SNL's Lorne Michaels, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey, and even Fallon's predecessor, Jay Leno to fully paint the picture of who Fallon is and why we won't see him become a political commentator in his comedy career.

“I do think there’s some nobility in trying to do a show for more people, as opposed to doing a show for less,” said Meyers, who lost viewers when he made his show more political. “After the hot takes are dead and gone, and the carcasses are strewn about, having fun is pretty undefeated as a way to spend your time.”

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35 P.M. on NBC.