In September of last year, with the US Presidential Election entering it's final few weeks, Donald Trump was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in what has now infamously become known as the hair tousling incident. 

Critics claimed the interview was far too soft for a man that was in the running to be President and that Fallon had a responsibility to ask tough questions. 

In a new interview with The New York Times, the late night host has opened up about the incident and the effect the internet reaction had on him at the time. 

“I go, I just can’t read Twitter,” he said. “Then I can’t read the news. I can’t read the internet.”

Speaking in a quiet, tentative tone, Mr. Fallon seemed to be reliving the experience as he recounted it.

“I’m a people pleaser,” he said. “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.”

Fallon also expressed regret at not addressing the incident on the show at the time. 

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

After weeks of internal conflict, Fallon decided that the only thing for him to do was to keep doing the show that he has been doing. 

“I tossed and turned for a couple of weeks, but I have to make people laugh,” he said. “People that voted for Trump watch my show as well.”

The full piece for The New York Times empathetic image of Fallon but with his ratings consistently losing out to Stephen Colbert it may be too little too late for fans. 

Via Uproxx