Jay Leno believes late-night TV comedians have become too politicized — and that they risk losing half the viewing audience by “cozying up to one side or the other.”
“To 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,” Leno said in a recent interview with David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. “Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion.”
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Leno didn’t name names. But the current roster of late-night hosts — Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and more — has routinely mocked President Trump and the MAGA movement. To be fair, they have also opportunistically lampooned Democrats.
Leno’s impression is that late-night TV these days skews toward specific political viewpoints. “I love political humor, don’t get me wrong,” the late-night veteran told Trulio. “But it’s just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.” Leno asked rhetorically, “Why 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.”
Leno’s interview with Trulio, formerly Fox News Digital’s managing editor and head of strategy and editorial operations, was conducted before CBS announced on July 17 that it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” CBS claimed it was “purely a financial decision.”
The axing of Colbert’s 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 “60 Minutes.” After Trump said “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Colbert told Trump to “Go fuck yourself.” On Friday, David Letterman, former “Late Show” host, slammed the cancellation of Colbert’s show as an act of “pure cowardice” and suggested that Skydance Media (whose takeover of Paramount is set to close next month after the FCC approved the deal) wanted Colbert ousted to avoid problems with the Trump administration.
The caption on the Reagan Foundation’s YouTube interview clip with Leno, which was posted July 22, says, “Late-night TV used to be about laughs — not lectures. @jayleno tells us why he never shared his political opinions on The Tonight Show, and why he thinks today’s hosts are losing half of America by doing so.” The first part of Trulio’s interview with Leno was posted July 9 on YouTube. Part 2, in which Leno “shares his thoughts on Reagan’s comedic brilliance,” was uploaded July 15.
Leno hosted “The Tonight Show” on NBC from 1992 to 2009; Conan O’Brien 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.
After Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Leno said in an appearance on “The View” that he was “not a fan” of Trump but that, “The nice thing about this election is, it was fair, it was honest…. there was no cheating. Everybody says it was honest. I mean, it’s a great day for democracy,” Leno added.
In the interview with Leno, Trulio alluded to a study of the comedian’s “Tonight Show” jokes, which Trulio said had found were “roughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats.” According to a George Mason University analysis released in 2009, on “The Tonight Show” from 1992-2008, Leno told 4,468 jokes about Bill Clinton, nearly 50% more than George W. Bush (2,999 jokes).
Asked by Trulio what his strategy was vis-a-vis political humor, Leno replied, “It was funny to me when I got hate letters [that said], ‘You and your Republican friends’ and ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy‘ — over the same joke. And I go, ’Well, that’s good. That’s how you get a whole audience.’”
Leno has previously shared his belief that late-night hosts who have come after him are too one-sided. In 2019, he said on “The View” that he “always liked to humiliate and degrade both sides equally.”
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