Donald Trump pushed back Sunday at President Barack Obama for making him the "focus of the evening" in his White House Correspondents' Dinner speech, and laced into Saturday Night Live comedian Seth Meyers as a "stutterer" whose delivery was lacking.
Continue ReadingTrump's comments came in a quick phone-in to "Fox and Friends," a day after he sat almost stone-faced while the president and Meyers ripped him repeatedly, to belly laughs from the crowd. People at tables around him gaped at him watching for a reaction, and some of his tablemates wrote on Twitter that it was uncomfortable.
"Well, I really understood what I was getting into — I didn't know that I'd be virtually the sole focus," Trump said. "I guess when you're leading in the polls that sort of thing tends to happen. But I was certainly in a certain way having a good time listening. I don't think the American people are having a good time with $5 gas. ... I was thinking to myself as they were doing this, you know, the American people are really suffering and we're all" having fun at a gala.
"I thought Seth Meyers — his delivery frankly was not good," Trump added. He's a stutterer."
Prior to the dinner, after he strolled the red carpet with his wife Melania, Trump said that he actually didn't think he would get poked by the president.
"I wouldn't think [Obama] would address me" during his speech," Trump told ABC News.
On Sunday morning, after the skewering, Trump said, "You raise to a certain level in the polls and boy does the world come after you. ... That was a largely liberal room."
"I had no idea it would be to that extent, where you know, it was just joke after joke after joke," he said. "It was almost like, is there anyone else they could talk about?"
Trump was also asked if he had learned a lesson from the widespread coverage of his F-bomb-laden speech in Las Vegas last week.
"Well, it was a speech in Las Vegas, in front of a rough group of folks, and a great group of folks, and I got standing ovation... It was really well received," he said. "The fact is it's a word of emphasis with that group. Probably I won't do it anymore, to be honest with you."
But he also said people ought to realize that salty language is often used in tough negotiations.
"That is very mild compared to what happens in a real room," he said.
