When Steve Harvey agreed to meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump, he was called everything but a child of God. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Harvey talked about how the infamous meeting was set up and his single biggest regret: not listening to his wife. Marjorie Harvey told her husband to skip the sit-down with Trump and now he wishes he had.

“Now here’s the crazy thing: I’m supposed to be on a boat for my 60th birthday, so my wife says, ‘Steve, just take off [and skip the meeting]. You’ll meet with him some other time,'” Steve recalled. “God, I should’ve listened.”

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Harvey’s friendship with President Obama was part of his motivation to at least try to work with the incoming administration. So when Trump’s team called, Harvey answered.

“…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,” Harvey said. “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. We’re friends. So I say, ‘OK, cool.'”

https://youtu.be/5Oo9wv1RgDE

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The Black community and many of Harvey’s peers came for Harvey’s neck. They saw his willingness to sit down with Trump after all of the racist and hateful campaign rhetoric as a betrayal. Harvey says he wasn’t ready for what came next.

“The backlash. It was so vicious that it really threw me,” Harvey said. “I was being called names that I’ve never been called: Uncle Tom. A coon. A sellout. Because I went to see this man?”

Steve Harvey interviewed President Barack Obama for his daytime talk show. Full interview will air Dec. 20 at 2 p.m. pic.twitter.com/ZHcfec79d3

— Urban Cusp (@UrbanCusp) December 18, 2013

Harvey went on to talk about what happened during the meeting with Trump. For the first 20 minutes, they talked about golf. But Harvey then leveled with Trump saying that although he supported Hilary Clinton in the election, he was still willing to help.

Harvey told Trump that he wanted to connect with Dr. Ben Carson, the head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and find a way to turn failing schools into vision centers where STEM, computers, and coding are taught. Within minutes, Trump had Carson on the phone.

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The good news is that Harvey and Carson are making progress. They have had meetings, set up teams, and are looking to announce a finalized plan for the first vision center by the year’s end. But as far as maintaining any kind of relationship with Trump, Harvey won’t be going down that road again anytime soon.

“No, I haven’t talked to him since,” Harvey said.

Lesson learned.

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