Geraldo Rivera — during a live interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Tuesday — appeared to work through in real time his complicated emotions surrounding his decision to dump longtime “hangout buddy” Donald Trump and endorse Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

And the former Fox News personality expressed a major regret ― that he hadn’t bailed on Trump before.

Rivera first announced his backing of Harris in a lengthy social media post last week in which he called the ex-president and current GOP nominee a “sore loser” and slammed his former “loyal friend” for what he described as “an increasingly menacing campaign to discredit the 2020 election.”

Rivera told Melber he’d hoped to largely go under the radar this election but felt compelled to speak out after seeing Trump “being competitive in every single race, if not leading” and fearing he may actually win back the White House.

“It was something I could not abide,” said Rivera.

“And yes, he has always been very nice to me and my family, a good friend and a hangout buddy and all the rest of it,” he added. “That only made it worse, Ari, because for me to take that step, for me to get up off the couch and say this cannot abide, this has to end right here. What is shocking to me though is … that despite all of that he could still be the 47th president.”

Rivera, who appeared on the final Trump-hosted season of “Celebrity Apprentice” that aired in 2015, acknowledged that at that time the thought of his friend running for president had been “intoxicating” and he copped to sometimes dismissing some of the criticisms leveled at Trump.

“You forgive so much and I am so disappointed in my kind of blindness because when push came to shove, he was revealed by his own action to be exactly the person that his critics were saying that he was,” he said.

Melber asked Rivera if he now felt contrite.

Rivera replied, “Contrition, I don’t know if that’s the right word. Embarrassed is another word.”

“You feel embarrassed?” asked Melber.

Rivera responded, “I feel, you know, you’re putting me up against my loyalty to someone who was nice and who was good to me, so it’s very difficult to confront and say that I was embarrassed. But in retrospect, I wish I had bailed on the Trump train a lot sooner before he threatened the Constitution of the United States with its utter destruction.”

Watch the full interview here: