Name: David Letterman at The New Yorker Festival, October 7, 2016
Uploaded: 2016-10-08T13:09:41.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman at The New Yorker Festival, October 7, 2016' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-10-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Letterman at The New Yorker Festival, October 7, 2016' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-10-08. Transcript available.

David Letterman at The New Yorker Festival, October 7, 2016

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Hello, I'm Susan Morrison, I'm the Articles Editor of The New Yorker, and on
behalf of the magazine, I'm happy to welcome you to the 17th Annual New Yorker
Festival and tonight's conversation with David Letterman.
Please silence your phones and remember that no flash photography is allowed
tonight.
We'll be up here talking for about 90 minutes and we'll leave some time in
those minutes for questions from the audience.
If you'd like to tweet or otherwise share this event, please use the hashtag TNYFest.
Okay, my boss David Remnick likes to say that the two inventions of the 20th
century that changed the way we live more than anything else are kitty litter
and air conditioning.
Now, I'd have to add to that list David Letterman, who's without question the
most original television voice of his generation.
I don't think he needs any more introduction than that, I'm sure you agree.
So please welcome David Letterman.
Thank you so much.
Look under your seats for your special Tiffany gift box.
Never been compared to kitty litter.
Off to a flying start.
Do you know what I discovered today when I was looking up to make sure that
kitty litter was indeed a 20th century invention?
It was invented the year you were born.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
1946.
Anyway, well here we go.
First of all, thank you very much for thinking of me.
It's a great honor, a great privilege, and I can't tell you how nice it is to
be out of the house.
Well, we're so, so glad that you're here.
You even put on the nice shiny shoes.
Thank you.
Yes.
New shoes.
Great.
Well, I'm going to start with a question that I know every single person in
this audience would like to know the answer of,
which is what did you do today?
What do you do now?
Well, what I did today is different from what I do now.
Today I got up at the crack of dawn and very excited about this event.
And we have two dogs, yellow laps.
One's name is Dutch, one's name is Sully.
And I took them for a long run.
And that's, for dog owners, you understand that that's a euphemism.
And we got that taken care of.
And then I myself went for a long run.
And that isn't a euphemism.
And then I got on a train and I came to the greatest city in the world.
And here I am in this lovely theater talking to you folks.
Thank you again.
We'll talk a little later to what your normal post-television day is like.
But when I learned that you had agreed to come and talk to us today, at first I
was thinking, why would you want to do this?
I was scratching my head.
And then it came to me, and I don't know, you tell me if I'm right.
I thought, Donald Trump.
And I assume you must miss the platform, the ability to be able to sound off on
the news of the day.
Well, yes and no.
First of all, God bless Trumpy.
Secondly, it would be never ending.
I mean, it would be the lead story of every show.
And it's been running now for a year and a half and will go far beyond November.
So while it might be fun here and there to drop something in, I don't know if I
have the stamina for a full plate of Trumpy night in and night out.
And I said when this began, this problem will solve itself.
And I firmly believe that.
And perhaps there are Trump supporters in the House.
Perhaps there are anti-Trump folks in the House.
Please don't take any offense at this, but there's not a chance in hell that
this man will be elected president.
And if he is, I'll get you all a lovely gift from Tiffin.
I'm sure you know that Hillary Clinton has been using a clip from your show of
you in one of her ads.
It's you talking to Trump about how his neckties and other goofy merchandise
that he sells is not made in the USA.
Did you get a kick out of that?
Yes, I did. I didn't know about it until I started watching the Olympics.
And it seemed to be featured in the Olympics every night.
And I was flattered.
But I must say all credit for that goes to the segment producer who three or
four years ago put that together, a kid by the name of Brian Tedda.
And that, by the way, is sort of my career in television in a nutshell.
I always drove the car that others built for me.
Well, on one of Trump's appearances, and I can't remember if it's the time you
brandished the neckties to him or another one.
You got into a conversation with him where you ended up calling him a racist.
Yes.
And at that point he said he would never come back on your show.
Fill me in on the chronology and then how was that resolved?
All right, let me just say one thing. As I've grown older, I find that I talked
endlessly, but I have very little to say.
So this is going to take some time.
Donald Trump was a fixture on our show, and I think the old show, the one we
did at NBC and then the one we did at CBS.
And he was a beloved guest.
People got excited.
I think it was the allure or the pose of a billionaire.
Oh, my God, it's a billionaire.
It was his hair. We used to make fun of his hair.
I used to, sitting right there where you are, I would refer to him as a slumlord.
And we got to love having Trumpy on because he could really take a punch.
I mean, there wasn't anything.
I was asking him about being married to Marla Maples.
And he said, if you're interested, I'll give you her phone number.
It was just, it was all Trump all the time.
So then he started messing around with the birther and how did a guy like
Barack Obama get into Columbia?
How did a guy like him get into Harvard?
And these questions, and it wasn't an original thought to myself.
I heard other people smarter than myself break down the innuendo of that, the
nuance of what he was talking about.
And then we got to talking about him one night on the show without Trumpy.
And I said, well, if he's a racist, maybe we shouldn't invite him on the show.
Being full well meaning that if he is in fact a racist.
So then I had to call Don because he wasn't coming back on the show.
And I said, Don, I don't think you're a racist because I think you're too smart.
I said, I think smart people are not racists.
And he said, well, of course, I'm smart.
I'm not a racist.
I said, well, there you go.
You've proven my point.
So come, come back and be on the show.
And he came back and he was on the show two or three times after that.
And I thought the deal was done.
I thought, okay, I called him out.
He's too smart to be a racist.
He said, yeah, I'm too smart to be a racist.
Well, I was wrong.
Right.
He's clearly a racist now.
Well, you know, and I said this the other day, talking to a kid from the New
York Times.
In the beginning, and we've heard Trump were running for president over and
over again.
And we always thought, ha, ha, ha.
And it would be good fun.
And then he opens up and he talks about the building the wall and the evil
people coming from Mexico and wherever else.
And when that happened, I thought, okay, this will take care of him.
He's done there.
Or at the very least, somebody will say, Don, we need to talk to you a little
bit about what you said regarding Mexicans.
Eh, just don't hit that so hard next time.
You know, I thought if he was really in it, somebody with some brains, but that
didn't happen.
And then the next thing that I found unconscionable, actually unconscionable,
was he physically mocked a man who's a reporter from the New York Times who has,
suffers, I believe, a congenital birth defect.
And I just thought, forget it's Donald Trump, forget he's running for president,
forget who he is, forget what he is, man or a woman.
If you can, in a national forum, with great confidence, stand there and make
fun of someone suffering a disability over which they have no control all their
entire life,
then you are a badly damaged human being.
And that's what I believe in it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That show pioneered the idea of, the concept of found humor.
You know, you find humor in delis and shop signs and license plates, and Trump
is a perfect example of human found humor.
You're a ridiculous, blowhard fathead who, you know, made good television,
obviously.
Do you ever feel, I mean, I think all of us in the media who have been having
fun with his idiocy to a certain extent,
we're now, I mean, I think we're all kind of thinking, ah, you know, was it too
much fun?
Are we somehow guilty?
Do you ever worry that you kind of, along with the rest of us, have kept him afloat
by poking at him like a piñata?
That's a good point.
Because in any other walk of life, he would be ostracized.
You would not go near a person who behaved this way.
I believe the fact that he is still in it.
I think our good friends of the Republican Party, well, I think they found
their 2020 candidate in governor of my former home state, Mike Pence.
But it's like, we don't want the circus to leave town.
This is too much fun.
So let's just keep saying.
But I don't think it will come to anything.
I think it was David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times, who formed this
notion for me,
which is he will win the nomination, and then in the general election, he will
be crushed by historic proportions.
And I believe that.
I just believe that we're having too much fun, but when it comes time to one's
conscience, it just won't happen.
Well, to stay.
On the other hand, what a wonderful exercise in democracy.
Anybody in this country can't grow up to become president.
I mean, he did nothing illegal that we can at least pin on him.
And somehow he was able to beat up on all of his republicans.
He should have been forced out of the Republican raising.
Don, just run your own party.
And good luck to you on that.
Well, to stay on this subject of our entertainment, you know, entertainment
industrial complex using Trump as a, you know, to entertain ourselves with.
How do you feel about the way Jimmy Fallon took a lot of criticism in the last
few weeks after having Trump on the show and basically joking around with him
and not challenging him?
Do you think that it's the obligation of a late night host to ask a demagogue
tough questions or is it an entertainment show?
Well, except for the late night host.
If it had been me, I would have been all over him.
I would have, I would have gone right after him because, and maybe it's
different for others, but I have a long, I've known Donald Trump for years.
I mean, I've been in the city for 35 years and he was a guest on every show, so
I've known him.
I have a relationship.
I would feel completely confident and completely comfortable saying, what are
you doing?
What the hell is wrong with you?
You, you need an appointment, get yourself an appointment, get yourself some
therapy, get yourself a goddamn diagnosis and get a prescription.
You can't be walking around like this.
If only, if only we could get him up here right now.
And there's probably even a shrink in the house.
I know that you're a fan of Lester Holt.
And I'm wondering if you, you know, speaking of hosts and talking to Trump, how
do you feel he handled Trump at the debate?
I know there's a sense that he was a little bit of absentee.
Well, I just, I'm not quite sure what the expectation is for a presidential
debate host.
Do you, do you lay back and be courteous to the two people running for the
highest homes in the world?
Uh, do you insert yourself?
Do you intervene?
Are, are you in fact a referee?
I, I, I'm not sure.
I mean, I can remember reading after, uh, Matt Lauer did the, the presidential,
uh, and then back-to-back deal.
Uh, and I watched it and I thought, well, it seems all right to me.
And then it turns out it wasn't perceived that way.
Uh, Lester Holt, I mean, I kind of put myself in that position and God knows I
would screw it up.
Uh, so I, I, I can't comment about that.
I, I think really the, the moderator is the least of it.
Right.
You know, it's that, it's the impression, it's the first impression.
And, um, I, I think they actually have these debates without a moderator.
I wonder if, if that's a, just a, a function of us all having a little bit of
fatigue over the story.
You know, um.
It's tiresomism.
No,