Woody Harrelson says he had to 'go outside and burn one' to get through dinner with Donald Trump
GIFFONI VALLE PIANA, ITALY - JULY 20: Woody Harrelson attends Giffoni Film Festival 2019 on July 20, 2019 in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy. (Photo by Stefania D'Alessandro/Getty Images)
(FOX NEWS) - Actor Woody Harrelson revealed in a recent interview that he had a "brutal" dinner with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump years ago, saying "It got so bad" that he had to "go outside" and smoke.
During an interview with Esquire magazine, Harrelson recalled a dinner his friend, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, had invited him to, where Ventura suspected that Trump was going to ask him to be his vice president in a 2004 campaign run.
“So, Jesse Ventura is a buddy of mine, and he called me up – and this is in, oh, 2002 – and said, ‘Donald Trump is going to try to convince me to be his running mate for the Democratic ticket in 2004. Will you be my date?’” Harrelson said.
“I said, ‘Yeah, man.’ So we all met at Trump Tower, sat down. Melania was there, only she wasn’t his wife yet. And it was, let me tell you, a brutal dinner. Two and a half hours. The fun part was watching Jesse’s moves. It would look like Trump had him pinned, was going to get him to say yes, and then Jesse would slip out at the last second.”
The Oscar-nominated actor accused Trump of having a "monologue monopoly" at the dinner table at not letting him, Ventura, or the future first lady speak. And it "got so bad" that Harrelson had to leave the room.
“Now, at a fair table with four people, each person is entitled to 25 percent of the conversation, right? I’d say Melania got about 0.1 percent, maybe. I got about 1 percent. And the governor, Jesse, he got about 3 percent,” Harrelson explained. “Trump took the rest. It got so bad I had to go outside and burn one before returning to the monologue monopoly.”
He continued, "Listen, I came up through Hollywood, so I’ve seen narcissists. This guy was beyond. It blew my mind. He did say one thing that was interesting, though. He said, ‘You know, I’m worth four billion dollars,’ or maybe he said five billion dollars—one of those numbers, I forget.
"Anyway, he said, ‘I’m worth however — many billion dollars. But when I die, no matter how much it is, I know my kids are going to fight over it.’ That was the one true statement he made that night, and I thought, 'OK, yeah, that’s pretty cool.'”
The "Zombieland" star also revealed that he went to college with Vice President Mike Pence.
“As a freshman, I gave a sermon to a youth group, and Mike was the guy running the show," Harrelson recalled. "He was a junior, I think ... He struck me as a nice guy, very sincere. I don’t know how well we’d get along now, but we got along OK then."