Donald Trump pokes fun at himself on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

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Republican front-runner does his first late-night TV interview since launching his presidential campaign
Reveals that his wife predicted 'If you run, you will win'
Calls his surging candidacy 'a movement going on that's amazing to watch'
Pokes fun at himself in sketch as Fallon plays his mirror image, joking about tricking Mexico into building border wall with giant Jenga game
Says Hillary Clinton's email scandal is 'wrong' and soft-pedals feud with Carly FIorina, calling her 'a really nice woman' – before saying he's never met her

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com

Published: 00:11 EST, 12 September 2015 | Updated: 08:56 EST, 12 September 2015

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Republican front-runner Donald Trump still lacks experience apologizing, but he told 'Tonight Show' host Jimmy Fallon that he's open to the idea – provided he ever makes a mistake.

'I totally think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong!' he joked on Friday.

'I would absolutely apologize – hopefully sometime in the distant future – if I'm ever wrong.'

Trump and Fallon shifted gears back and forth between the serious and the funny during The Donald's first late-night TV interview since launching his presidential campaign on June 16.

The funnyman host joked that Trump had caught flack for taking the stage Wednesday at a tea party rally in Washington to the tune of REM's 'It's the end of the world as we know it' – a choice that enraged the band's very liberal members.

Instead, he said, Trump should consider dancing on to the DJ Khaled track 'All I Do Is Win.'

'I mean, honestly,' Trump replied, 'it happens to be 100 per cent true.'

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IN ALL HIS GLORY: Donald Trump joked Friday on the Tonight Show that 'I would absolutely apologize – hopefully sometime in the distant future – if I'm ever wrong'

YUUUGE: Trump sat across a makeup table from host Jimmy Fallon, dressed up and wigged to look like his mirror image, and went along with jokes cracked at his expense

RATINGS BOOM: Fallon tipped his hat to The Donald's massive audience draw with a joke about NBC redoing his show's logo to give The Donald top billing

'AMAZING CROWD OUTSIDE': Trump gushed on Twitter about the fans who showed up to see him enter and exit the Tonight Show's studio at Rockefeller Plaza in New York

With a nod to Friday's solemn date, the billionaire said the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks 'means strength' to him, 'because the way the city came back, I've never seen anything like it.'

'We have amazing people,' he said.

On Hillary Clinton's email server scandal, Trump pronounced the situation dire and full of 'a lot of bad stuff' for the leading Democrat in the race.

'I think it's going to be very tough for her,' he said. 'She's had a very, very bad time. I've never seen anything like it.'

The laughs came after he deadpanned: 'I feel terribly about it.'

And asked to say something nice about rival CEO-turned-politician Carly Fiorina, Trump downplayed their week-long feud.

'I think she's a very nice woman,' he said. 'I really nice woman. Am I doing a great job?'

The Donald then conceded that 'I've never met her.'

Fallon began the evening with a hat-tip to the ratings boom a Trump appearance would likely bring NBC, chuckling that the network had decided to rename the show – complete with a new logo.

'The Tonight Show Starring Donald Trump,' it read, 'featuring a guest appearance by Jimmy Fallon.'

GREAT WALL OF TRUMP? Fallon, dressed as Trump, joked that the best way to get Mexico to build a wall on its border with the US would be to camouflage the mission as a giant Jenga game

SHORT RIDE: Trump took his limo just a handful of blocks on Friday afternoon for the show's taping in the Manhattan borough of New York City, where he works in his eponymous Trump Tower

'EVERYBODY HANDS GO UP!': Fallon joked that the dance club track 'All I do is win' should be Trump's signature walk-on song and he agreed, saying, 'I mean, honestly, it happens to be 100 per cent true'

The real estate tycoon also made a cameo of sorts in Fallon's weekly 'Thank you note' sketch.

'Thank you, Donald Trump,' Fallon said, as he mimed writing a card while sad piano music played, 'for appearing on the show tonight – and in every monologue we've done in the past few months.'

Before his sit-down interview, Trump took a calculated risk and shared the stage with Fallon for a comedy sketch in which he himself was the butt of jokes.

READY FOR DONALD? Trump took a risk by appearing before a late-night audience of millennials and Gen-Xers but drew both applause and laughs – and no boos

Fallon, made up and wigged to look like Trump, sat across a dressing-room table from him with camera angles making it look like The Donald was his mirror image.

'I was looking at my beautiful reflection,' he quipped. 'I'm like a Greek god that just took a bath in a pumpkin spice latte.'

'Fallon's a lightweight,' the host said, impersonating Trump. 'The only one qualified to interview me is me.'

'How are you gonna create jobs in this country?' he asked the real Trump.

'I'm just gonna do it,' came the answer.

'But how?'

'By doing it,' Trump replied as himself. 'It just happens. Just by doing it.'

'Genius!' the faux-Trump Fallon exclaimed.

The host delivered the best line of the sketch, imagining as Trump how he might convince Mexico to pay for the construction of a massive wall on America's southern border to keep illegal immigrants out.

'I'll challenge them to the biggest game of Jenga ever!' he said. 'I'll make them set up the board. And then when they finish I'll say, "I don't want to play any more".'

Later, as the two men sat on the show's main set, Fallon asked Trump how he planned to build that wall without immigrant labor.

'We're going to build it,' he insisted. 'We may build it with immigrant labor.'

Friday was vintage Trump, with the mega-rich candidate referring to himself in the third person – 'I want them to love Trump,' he said of voters – and proudly visualizing himself in the White House

'My wife actually said to me, "If you run, you will win",' he said.

He mixed self-deprecating humor – lines about his hair – with enough serious policy pronouncements to register with the millennials and Gen-Xers who make up the bulk of Fallon's audience.

BACKSTAGE: Trump wrote on Instagram that working with Fallon was 'great fun!' The two are pictured before their 'mirror' skit as the host prepared to put on his Trump-like blonde wig

THANK YOU: Fallon put Trump in his weekly 'thank you note' segment, expressing gratitude for the regular supply of jokes the billionaire – and his hairdo – allow him to crack on a near-nightly basis

'IT'S A MOVEMENT': Trump said he's seeing a groundswell of Americans flocking to see more than just him

'We have to become rich again,' Trump proclaimed, 'and we're goign to become great again.'

It was his first applause line, but not his last.

'We're not going to be scoffed at,' he said of the sense he gets from the tens of thousands who flock to see him speak. 'We're not going to be laughed at.'

'There's a movement going on that's amazing to watch,' he added.

But the Tonight Show is a laugh-fest, not a snooze-fest.

While peppering him with 'lightning round' questions, Fallon asked if he would consider making bad-boy actor Gary Busey his running mate.

'I love Gary. He's fantastic,' Trump shot back. 'But more of a Supreme Court justice in my opinion.'

'I'm probably going to go with somebody else,' he joked. 'I would say maybe Kanye West.'