NBC News – Donald Trump talks recent Vince McMahon conversation on “Meet the Press”

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump referenced a recent conversation with WWE CEO Vince McMahon in an interview with NBC News’s “Meet The Press with Chuck Todd” that will be airing Sunday morning on NBC.

In an interview recorded Saturday, Trump was asked by Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd about his wrestling-style entrance at the Republican National Convention Monday in Cleveland.

Trump responded by noting his strategy and post-entrance conversation with Vince McMahon, who endorsed the theatrics.

The interview will be Trump’s first network TV interview since being formally nominated for the Republican party’s presidential ticket on Thursday…

NBC News Release Transcript

CHUCK TODD: Let me tell you, you bring up Thursday night, I’ve got to ask you about your entrance. Before we get to Thursday, that Monday night entrance was something else. I know you’ve gotten a lot of feedback on it.

DONALD TRUMP: I think I’m a little bit lucky, and a couple of people had that idea and I went along with the idea. And everything just worked right. And it was so good that they wanted to do it on Thursday night. I said, “Never in a million years, because you’ll never get it that way again.”

CHUCK TODD: I don’t think I’ve seen that even on WWE.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I know. Well, Vincent’s a good friend of mine. He called me, he said, “That was a very, very good entrance.” But I didn’t want to do it a second time, because, you know, it never works out the second time.

***

Trump was inducted into the celebrity wing of WWE’s Hall of Fame three years ago surrounding WrestleMania 29 in New York/New Jersey and has a long history with the McMahons and WWE.

WWE also has a working relationship with NBC Universal, mainly for WWE Raw and Smackdown programming on USA Network. WWE and NBCU also entered into a promotional relationship last year trying to address WWE’s image among advertisers and potential business partner.