NewsBusters reported that five late-night comedy shows uncorked almost 6,000 jokes against Donald Trump to about 1,100 about Joe Biden (and only 92 about Kamala Harris). All this allegedly hilarious hostility failed to prevent Trump from getting re-elected.
Our comedy analyst Alex Christy has crunched all the late-night numbers and analysis of the Keystone Cops of comedy. Alex routinely fills a large spreadsheet of jokes, because we take late-night comedy very seriously.
A study of five late-night comedy shows found that these TV comedians told a total of 13,676 political jokes, of which 11,226 (or 82 percent) were directed at someone or something on the conservative side of the political aisle,
The shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
After Trump and Biden, the top ten joke targets were JD Vance (368), Republicans (255), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (238), MAGA/Trump supporters (222), Rudy Giuliani (221), Melania Trump (181), Kristi Noem (168), and Matt Gaetz (164). Vance had more jokes about him than both the incumbent vice president and his campaign counterpart combined, 368 to 203. (Kamala’s 92 plus 111 for Tim Walz).
But the pattern doesn’t stop there! Generic jokes about Republicans outnumbered those about Democrats 255-101, while generic jokes about conservatives outnumbered those about liberals 98-27. When it came to mocking presidential kids, Donald Trump Jr. (145) and Eric Trump (144) outnumbered those about Hunter Biden 289-26.
Conservative media was also joked about far more often than liberal media. Fox News jokes led CNN/MSNBC jokes 107-27. (CNN: 17, MSNBC: 10). Tucker Carlson was the most joked about conservative media personality with 79, while Jake Tapper was the most joked about liberal media personality with 9.
There was a similar tilt about congressional leaders, Supreme Court justices, and, amazingly Trump’s Cabinet nominees vs. Biden’s cabinet members. Team Biden served all year, and Trump only nominated his team after the election. But with RFK, Noem, Hegseth, and (foiled) Matt Gaetz, the joke gap was 669-10.
All of this underlines how leftist comedians follow leftist media outlets for their joke targets. The two reinforce each other’s messaging.
From the beginning of June through the end of December, the late-night comedy shows welcomed 120 liberal guests and only one conservative. When it came to partisan officials, the count was 35 Democrats to 0 Republicans. For journalists and celebrities, the results were 84 liberals to 1 conservative. That was Bill O’Reilly on The Daily Show.
This was the fifth MRC guest count study since September 2022 and it brings the totals since then to 403 liberals and 13 conservatives, or 97 percent liberal.
We also discussed Alex’s study of the “Weekend Update” jokes on the autumn episodes of Saturday Night Live. The joke count as smaller, but the results were similar.
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