Comedian Steve Harvey regrets a meeting with Donald Trump during his transition to president. He only regrets it because of the "vicious" backlash he faced.
On Tuesday The Hollywood Reporter published an interview where Harvey described the nature of the racist and personal attacks on him after he met with Trump a few days before his inauguration.
When Harvey was asked about his meeting with Trump three days before the inauguration Harvey said, "I didn't see that coming. Jesus." When asked to elaborate he said, "The backlash."
Harvey said the only reason the meeting went down was "because my business partner got a call from the Obama transition team, who said that the Trump transition team would like to set up a meeting. The Obama team said they thought it would be a good idea because the president is encouraging dialogue. And I have a relationship with Obama."
The meeting happened on Harvey's 60th birthday. His wife told him he should pass on the meeting and go on a boat, as he was scheduled. "God, I should have listened," Harvey said.
What kind of discussion went down between Trump and Harvey. He was very up front with Trump, he even admitted that he voted for Hillary.
We talked about golf for 20 minutes. And then I told him, "Mr. President, I'm going to be honest with you, I didn't vote for you. I campaigned very hard for Hillary Clinton." And I said, "The problem was that we made a lot of mistakes in the campaign. We were playing checkers and y'all was playing chess. But now that you're here, you're the 45th president and I'm going to help you." He wants to know how, so I say, "You've appointed Ben Carson as the head of Housing and Urban Development, and I've got keys to a lot of cities around this country from the years of performing that I've done. I can get an ear to them really quick and find out what their real needs are. Y'all keep closing schools in the cities. Why don't we take those schools that are closing, put some HUD money in them, and reopen them as vision centers and teach STEM and computers and coding? If you connect me with Ben Carson, I can help him with that." A few minutes later, he had Ben Carson on the phone.
When Steve Harvey was getting flooded with racist anger, he took to Twitter and made a statement and made it clear that Obama was who asked him to attend.
My meeting with @realDonaldTrump ... pic.twitter.com/Tz2O2W3a5n
— Steve Harvey (@IAmSteveHarvey) January 13, 2017
One really interesting part of the interview was when Harvey was asked if Hollywood is "more racist than America." He certainly didn't answer no.
'Cause they don't get it. And it's not that they're racist. It's that they, the people who greenlight shows, sit in an office in Beverly Hills, Burbank, Studio City, and they make decisions about America and none of them live there. And they've got to put everything in a category. "Blacks would like this. This is a black show." I think Black-ish is the first black show that hasn't had to put a white character on it. It's amazing how they think out here. And America's not that way at all.
If you want to read the entire interview click here.
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