Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cYes, the president tried to get me canceled over the last six months. That\u2019s one way to look at it,\u201d ABC\u2019s Jimmy Kimmel said at a network event last week. \u201cAnother way is you could also say I\u2019ve \u2018generated unparalleled engagement across a variety of platforms.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has long been critical of the late-night comedy shows that roast him daily. But his second term has been marked by his hostility toward late-night comics and his administration taking action against the networks that carry these shows. In some cases, networks made programming decisions that carried suspicions of political interference.<\/p>\n
So, how have the late-night hosts reacted? Not by relenting in their skewering of Trump, his administration or his policies. In fact, they\u2019ve turned up the heat, according to a Washington Post analysis of six late-night comedy shows critical of the president.<\/p>\n
Since Election Day, Trump has remained the most frequently mentioned individual, and hosts have continued satirizing and critiquing Trump over his policies, scandals and legal troubles.<\/p>\n
And as his second term progressed, Trump has been mentioned more frequently by these late-night hosts, not less. The proportion of late-night material with Trump as the target of the joke has steadily climbed, even amid the administration\u2019s threats and criticism from top officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody in their right mind cares what out-of-touch woke celebrities in Hollywood say or think,\u201d White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Post in response to the findings.<\/p>\n
And yet this term, Trump has rooted for late-night hosts to get fired and voiced a desire to take credit when they\u2019ve gone off the air. He did just that when CBS canceled \u201cThe Late Show\u201d last year, a decision the network said was \u201cpurely financial\u201d but coincided with parent company Paramount seeking federal sign-off on an $8 billion merger with Skydance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI absolutely love that Colbert got fired,\u201d Trump wrote on social media last year. Trump has also repeatedly predicted Kimmel would be next, rooted for \u201cTonight Show\u201d host Jimmy Fallon to lose his job and said that Meyers\u2019s \u201c100% anti Trump\u201d stance was \u201cprobably illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Trump also wrote on social media that if network news and late-night shows \u201care almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn\u2019t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!\u201d<\/p>\n
When John Oliver\u2019s \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d won a writing Emmy last year, writer Daniel O\u2019Brien said he was sharing the award with all of \u201clate-night political comedy, while that is still a type of show that\u2019s allowed to exist.\u201d The camera happened to pan to Kimmel, who would soon abruptly be pulled off the air after remarks he made after the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
Brendan Carr – the Trump-selected chair of the Federal Communications Commission – suggested that ABC parent company Disney\u2019s broadcast licenses could be jeopardized: \u201cWe can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,\u201d Carr said on a podcast. Later, the FCC said that talk shows were no longer exempt from the \u201cequal time\u201d rule for political candidates.<\/p>\n
The Post analyzed the transcripts of more than 400 hours of video clips posted to the YouTube channels of six late-night comedy shows generally critical of Trump since the 2024 election: \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert,\u201d \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,\u201d \u201cLate Night With Seth Meyers,\u201d \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d and \u201cReal Time With Bill Maher.\u201d None of these shows responded to The Post\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The first four of those shows are on broadcast networks – NBC, CBS and ABC – that more directly fall under the FCC\u2019s purview to ensure the public airwaves are being used in the \u201cpublic interest.\u201d (The commission doesn\u2019t issue network licenses but approves them for affiliates that carry the networks.)<\/p>\n
The last two are on cable channels, owned by companies – Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, respectively – that have had, or will have, pending business before federal regulators. Trump saves most of his vitriol for the network hosts, though he has a hot-and-cold relationship with Maher and has previously deemed Jon Stewart \u201cnot very bright and totally overrated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Trump has praised Fox\u2019s more conservative option for late-night comedy, \u201cGutfeld!,\u201d which airs at the earlier, 10 p.m. hour, and has more total viewers than the later comedy shows. The Fox program had a far lower share of jokes about Trump, The Post analysis shows.<\/p>\n
All of these shows rely on topical humor, so it\u2019s logical that the president of the United States would be the most frequently mentioned individual in the shows that The Post analyzed. And the dominance of Trump jokes dates back to his first term; late-night hosts who leaned political saw a bump in their ratings, as they veered toward mocking Trump and delivering serious monologues about his impact on the world. Back then, some of the comedians also hoped to provoke the president into paying attention to them: Colbert gleefully celebrated when, six months after the election, Trump finally responded to his nightly eviscerations by calling Colbert \u201ca no-talent guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the pressure on hosts has been markedly different this term. At the start of Trump\u2019s second term, the FCC reinstated complaints against three major networks and initiated several actions investigating media companies, including CBS, ABC and NBC, over the content they aired.<\/p>\n
The FCC has also started enforcing the equal time rule on entertainment talk shows, maintaining they don\u2019t have a blanket exemption because they operate similarly to news programs, a change in a decades-old practice. The agency said that ABC\u2019s \u201cThe View\u201d had violated the rule, and in February, Colbert told his audience that he was prevented from airing an interview with a Texas Democrat running in the state\u2019s Senate primary over FCC concerns. (Carr at the time said \u201cthere was no censorship here at all\u201d and CBS simply had to give interviews to his political rivals.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Trump has targeted media companies through several lawsuits filed before he was even sworn in for his second term. ABC settled one lawsuit for $15 million. CBS owner Paramount, in the midst of a merger, settled another Trump lawsuit for $16 million in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles: It\u2019s big fat bribe,\u201d Colbert joked on air. A few days later, CBS announced Colbert and the entire \u201cLate Show\u201d franchise would be canceled, surprising Colbert and the show\u2019s staff. The network said it was \u201cnot related in any way to the show\u2019s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cancellation didn\u2019t affect Colbert\u2019s joke output: The Post analysis found that, even after CBS canceled \u201cThe Late Show,\u201d Colbert continued to criticize the president and his administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, admittedly, the idea of paying a billion dollars to obey Donald Trump seems a little steep,\u201d Colbert joked on Jan. 22 about the cost for nations to secure a permanent seat on Trump\u2019s Board of Peace. \u201cAfter all, CBS got to do it for just 16 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Kimmel was taken off the air for about a week by ABC after his Kirk comments, sparking concerns about free speech and bowing to government pressure. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) labeled Carr\u2019s comments about the host \u201cdangerous as hell.\u201d Customers called for boycotts of Disney, and hundreds of celebrities signed a letter saying Kimmel was taken off the air \u201cafter our government threatened a private company with retaliation,\u201d calling it \u201ca dark moment for freedom of speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimmel again attracted the ire of the president last month for a parody of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner that aired a few days before the event; in it, he said that Melania Trump had \u201ca glow like an expectant widow.\u201d After a gunman tried to storm the dinner (Cole Tomas Allen was arrested and charged with attempted assassination), the first lady released a statement criticizing what she called Kimmel\u2019s \u201chateful and violent rhetoric.\u201d The president once again called on Disney and ABC to fire the host. (Kimmel later said he was making a joke about the couple\u2019s age gap and noted his history of advocacy against gun violence.)<\/p>\n
The Post analysis found that late-night hosts joked about a variety of themes, but some specific news items dominated their material. In particular, these shows focused on the controversy surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files, the Iran war, Trump\u2019s tariffs and the president\u2019s many construction projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were wondering how bad these Epstein files are, for Trump, turns out they\u2019re \u2018invade Venezuela\u2019 bad,\u201d Kimmel said on Jan. 5.<\/p>\n
(Trump had a long-standing friendship with Epstein, and they had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Epstein would later be charged with sex crimes. Authorities have not accused Trump of participating in Epstein\u2019s criminal conduct.)<\/p>\n
On March 26, Meyers took a dig at Trump\u2019s White House remodeling efforts: \u201cDuring today\u2019s Cabinet meeting, President Trump complained that you can\u2019t find gold paint that looks like real gold. Oh yeah, buddy, we noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n
And on April 10 of last year, Fallon\u2019s monologue included a bit about Trump pausing his tariffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI read that actually he did it because he was afraid that it would lead to a depression. Yeah, but Trump said that \u2018if we do have a depression, it\u2019ll be greater than the Great Depression, it\u2019ll be the Greatest Depression.\u2019 The Great Depression is also what Trump calls his spot on the couch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Methodology<\/h5>\n
The Post downloaded the transcripts of show clips posted to YouTube by six late-night shows: \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert,\u201d \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,\u201d \u201cLate Night With Seth Meyers,\u201d \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d and \u201cReal Time With Bill Maher.\u201d We also separately downloaded videos from Fox\u2019s \u201cGutfeld!\u201d For most shows, we used playlists that focused on monologues and news-related segments; for Kimmel, whose channel didn\u2019t have curated playlists of that kind, we used all the videos uploaded to the show\u2019s YouTube channel. We limited our analysis to clips posted after Trump was reelected on Nov. 5, 2024.<\/em><\/p>\nThe Post ran the transcripts through a machine-learning-based name-recognition process that scanned every clip to identify the people mentioned. Next, we broke the transcripts into short passages and used an artificial intelligence model to identify the jokes, what the jokes were about and who was the target of the jokes. Finally, we used another machine-learning technique called topic modeling to automatically discover the specific topics that came up across multiple jokes. The result is a database of individual jokes linked to the people they mention, the topics they cover and the dates they were posted, which allowed us to track how late-night shows responded to the Trump administration over time.<\/em><\/p>\nRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Stephen Colbert prepares for the end of CBS\u2019s \u201cThe Late Show\u201d – the finale airs Thursday night – one theme has been on the minds of other late-night hosts. \u201cI\u2019m Seth Meyers,\u201d NBC\u2019s \u201cLate Night\u201d host told the crowd gathered at an NBC industry preview event in New York last week. \u201cOr as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2426737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[384421,22389,23060,31122,22499,22653],"class_list":["post-2426736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-comedy-shows","tag-donald-trump","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-melania-trump","tag-seth-meyers","tag-stephen-colbert"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trump-tried-to-silence-late-night-hosts-Theyre-mocking-him-even.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2426736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2426738,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426736\/revisions\/2426738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2426737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2426736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2426736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2426736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}