{"id":97015,"date":"2025-07-27T15:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/97015\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T15:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T15:24:09","slug":"late-night-hosts-political-jokes-alienate-half-tv-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/97015\/","title":{"rendered":"Late-Night Hosts Political Jokes ‘Alienate’ Half TV Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJay Leno<\/a> believes late-night TV comedians have become too politicized \u2014 and that they risk losing half the viewing audience by \u201ccozying up to one side or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo me, I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be,\u201d Leno said in a recent interview with David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. \u201cNow you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeno didn\u2019t name names. But the current roster of late-night hosts \u2014 Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and more \u2014 has routinely mocked President Trump and the MAGA movement. To be fair, they have also opportunistically lampooned Democrats.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeno\u2019s impression is that late-night TV these days skews toward specific political viewpoints. \u201cI love political humor, don\u2019t get me wrong,\u201d the late-night veteran told Trulio. \u201cBut it\u2019s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.\u201d Leno asked rhetorically, \u201cWhy shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole. I mean, I like to bring people into the big picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeno\u2019s interview with Trulio, formerly Fox News Digital\u2019s managing editor and head of strategy and editorial operations, was conducted before CBS announced on July 17 that it was canceling \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert.\u201d<\/a> CBS claimed it was \u201cpurely a financial decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe axing of Colbert\u2019s show appeared to many critics to be another concession to Trump, coming after CBS parent company Paramount Global agreed to pay the president $16 million to settle what legal experts said was a meritless lawsuit going after \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d After Trump said\u00a0\u201cI absolutely love that Colbert got fired,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Colbert told Trump to \u201cGo fuck yourself<\/a>.\u201d On Friday, David Letterman, former \u201cLate Show\u201d host, slammed the cancellation of Colbert\u2019s show as an act of \u201cpure cowardice\u201d<\/a> and suggested that Skydance Media (whose takeover of Paramount is set to close next month<\/a> after the FCC approved the deal) wanted Colbert ousted to avoid problems with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe caption on the Reagan Foundation\u2019s YouTube interview clip with Leno<\/a>, which was posted July 22, says, \u201cLate-night TV used to be about laughs \u2014 not lectures. \u202a@jayleno\u202c tells us why he never shared his political opinions on The Tonight Show, and why he thinks today\u2019s hosts are losing half of America by doing so.\u201d The first part<\/a> of Trulio\u2019s interview with Leno was posted July 9 on YouTube. Part 2<\/a>, in which Leno \u201cshares his thoughts on Reagan\u2019s comedic brilliance,\u201d was uploaded July 15.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeno hosted \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d on NBC from 1992 to 2009; Conan O\u2019Brien briefly took the reins of the show before NBC brought Leno back from 2010-14. Leno was the first late-night talk show host to conduct an interview with a sitting president, with President Barack Obama appearing on the show in March 2009.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Trump\u2019s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Leno said in an appearance on \u201cThe View\u201d<\/a> that he was \u201cnot a fan\u201d of Trump but that, \u201cThe nice thing about this election is, it was fair, it was honest\u2026. there was no cheating. Everybody says it was honest. I mean, it\u2019s a great day for democracy,\u201d Leno added.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the interview with Leno, Trulio alluded to a study of the comedian\u2019s \u201cTonight Show\u201d jokes, which Trulio said had found were \u201croughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats.\u201d According to a George Mason University analysis<\/a> released in 2009, on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d from 1992-2008, Leno told 4,468 jokes about Bill Clinton, nearly 50% more than George W. Bush (2,999 jokes). Following them in the Top 10 most frequent targets of Leno\u2019s jokes were Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, O.J. Simpson, Dick Cheney, Michael Jackson, Monica Lewinsky, Bob Dole and John McCain.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked by Trulio what his strategy was vis-a-vis political humor, Leno replied, \u201cIt was funny to me when I got hate letters [that said], \u2018You and your Republican friends\u2019 and \u2018Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy\u2018 \u2014 over the same joke. And I go, \u2019Well, that\u2019s good. That\u2019s how you get a whole audience.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeno has previously shared his belief that late-night hosts who have come after him are too one-sided. In 2019, he said on \u201cThe View\u201d that he \u201calways liked to humiliate and degrade both sides equally.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tSEE ALSO: Jay Leno Says Jimmy Kimmel \u2018Humiliated Me\u2019 During 2010 \u2018Tonight Show\u2019 Interview and \u2018I Let It Happen. I Didn\u2019t Edit It. It Was My Mistake.\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay Leno believes late-night TV comedians have become too politicized \u2014 and that they risk losing half the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":97016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,63619,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-97015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jay-leno","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114925893658868402","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}