Comedian and Billy on the Street host Billy Eichner took the Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon to task for his role in normalizing Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
Mediaite reported that Eichner was speaking to Vulture magazine when he said that overall he thinks Fallon is "terrific" at the helm of NBC's flagship late night show, but that a September interview he did with Trump -- in which Fallon ruffled Trump's notorious hair -- was "naïve."
“I don’t think that was a good moment,” he said. “Moving forward, with how potentially dangerous these guys can be, you can’t be fluffing a Nazi sympathizer’s hair on television.”
He continued, “I thought it was naïve and a bit of a slap in the face to all the people that I know for a fact Jimmy Fallon loves and celebrates: the LGBT community, women, people of color.”
"In that instance, he just didn’t think it through," Eichner said. "You’re doing your show every day, and sometimes things slip through the cracks. I hope that he’ll be more mindful of that because Jimmy does have a big platform. He gets double the ratings of the other guys. He is probably speaking to more Trump voters than you or I. And I do think there’s a responsibility to not take things lightly. Even if you’re a performer whose go-to is to focus more on the more lighthearted stuff. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t do it again."
