The Huffington Post has a new piece out this week that takes a look back on the 2011 Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump, and it includes some pretty illuminating insights from the execs, producers, and writers who worked with Trump back when he he first considered running for President. None of the comedians who attended the roast spoke to The Huffington Post for the piece (Jeff Ross declined to speak because he reportedly “wants to remain on friendly terms with Trumpâ€), but they managed to get their hands on drafts of Trump’s rebuttal complete with Trump’s handwritten edits for the roast writers:
Trump made a few lackluster attempts at cracking wise. He changed a joke meant to slam MacFarlane from: “The only way you’ll ever draw a crowd is with a pencil.†Trump’s revision: “The only crowd you’ll attract is flies.†After a joke that cited climate change, Trump suggested a parenthetical: “(Which obviously doesn’t exist).†Elsewhere, Trump suggested a broadside against the entire dais: “Their all losers and I like associating with loser because it makes me feel even better about myself.†(The grammar mistakes are Trump’s.) Even in a script designed to be self-effacing, Trump couldn’t resist boosting himself. At the conclusion of the rebuttal, in an exaggerated (even by Trumpian standards) riff about how he lives in a “25,000 square-foot penthouse atop my solid-gold space station,†Trump ordered that the square footage be goosed to 50,000. He changed a line that read, “I’m sorry, I must go now and make a million dollars somewhere else,†to a “billion†dollars.
Read the rest of the piece over at The Huffington Post, and check out some of Trump’s edits below: