The Tonight Show landed its biggest audience in years as Jimmy Fallon hosted Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld last Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n The episode drew in 1.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen live-plus-same day figures. It was the program\u2019s most-watched \u201cregular\u201d broadcast \u2014 meaning not airing directly after a major sporting event \u2014 since December 19, 2023, when a post-The Voice finale episode attracted 1.74 million viewers.<\/p>\n Some of Thursday\u2019s viewers may be attributed to the night\u2019s lead guest, the Jonas Brothers; however, it\u2019s Gutfeld\u2019s segment that boasts by far the most viewers on the show\u2019s YouTube channel (990,000 at the time of writing).<\/p>\n During the highly anticipated interview, Fallon and Gutfeld steered clear of politics, instead bantering about their first drunken meeting at a bar in New York City.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is hilarious \u2014 we’ve met before,\u201d Fallon opened with. \u201cYes, you have no memory of it. Which is understandable, because we were wasted,\u201d Gutfeld responded before launching into a long-winded anecdote about their meeting.<\/p>\n The host of Fox\u2019s politically charged comedy panel show<\/a>, Gutfeld!, alluded to his then-upcoming appearance with Fallon last week, saying it would be the \u201cbiggest crossover since the Harlem Globetrotters visited the Golden Girls.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike the other guys, Jimmy sitting with me proves he\u2019s not afraid of upsetting his peers or afraid of my mesmerizing charm,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Fallon has shown his willingness to be pragmatic about humoring the right in the past, infamously hosting Donald Trump in September 2016, two months before his victory over Hillary Clinton<\/a>, and ruffling the New York property tycoon\u2019s blonde hair to check whether it was real.<\/p>\n The gesture alienated some of The Tonight Show\u2019s audience, and Fallon later expressed regret over it<\/a>, telling The New York Times in 2017: \u201cI didn\u2019t do it to humanize him. I almost did it to minimize him. I didn\u2019t think that would be a compliment: \u2018He did the thing that we all wanted to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump himself was angered over Fallon\u2019s \u201cwhimpering\u201d attempts to distance himself from the interview, rebuking him on Twitter: \u201cBe a man Jimmy!\u201d<\/p>\n By contrast, Trump has long been a champion of Gutfeld, posting a Fox press release celebrating his high ratings on Truth Social last September and writing<\/a> in all-caps: \u201cGUTFELD! NOTCHES LARGEST AUDIENCE IN PROGRAM HISTORY WITH NEARLY FIVE MILLION VIEWERS DURING INTERVIEW WITH FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Gutfeld](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755150798_839_Gutfeld-Fallon.png\")
Gutfeld and Fallon recalled their drunken first meeting on \u2018The Tonight Show\u2019 (The Tonight Show\/NBC)<\/p>\n