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Trump Was Right: He ‘Destroyed’ Late Night TV

Former president’s bold claim makes sense. Here are the receipts

Little known fact – Donald Trump has a knack for grandiosity.

It doesn’t mean the 45th president’s boasts aren’t occasionally on target.

Trump once bragged the mainstream media needed him to survive. Those same outlets are still around, but their numbers are a far cry from what they were during Trump’s term in office. And don’t even mention CNN+, which lasted all of one month before shuttering.

In short, Trump had a point.

The latest example of Trump’s ego sharing a larger truth?

“It was my great honor to have destroyed the ratings of Late Night ‘Comedy’ shows,” Trump shared from his Truth Social perch. “When Jimmy Fallon apologized for having humanized ‘Trump,’ and his ratings soared, the Radical Left forced him to apologize—that was effectively the end of The Tonight Show.”

More Trump hot air? Not so fast.

The real estate mogul’s 2016 “Tonight Show” appearance, in which Fallon tousled Trump’s hair, caused the press to turn on the host. The former “Saturday Night Live” star groveled for forgiveness. His show’s hard-Left viewers weren’t ready to make nice.

They fled for more partisan programs like CBS’s “The Late Show” and ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” And, by the look of Fallon’s current ratings, they never returned. A show that dominated late-night TV for decades is now a consistent fourth-place finisher.

RELATED: FALLON SOLD HIS SOUL FOR BILLIONAIRE BLOOMBERG 

Yet Trump’s impact on late-night television began before that “Tonight Show” appearance. When Trump emerged as a credible threat to win the GOP primaries in 2016 late night hosts abandoned all pretense of objectivity.

Host after host turned their satirical guns on the brash mogul, ignoring Hillary Clinton as a potential butt of their jokes.

Late-night television became a monolithic voice ready to stop Trump from ascending to the highest office in the land.

They failed.

So they did what most comic hosts should. They spent the next four years mocking Trump in every way possible. He was the president, after all.

Except their “Orange Man Bad” gags quickly grew stale, much like previous “horny” Bill Clinton jokes in the 1990s. Hosts also squandered their trustworthiness by going “all in” on the Russian collusion narrative, a corruption that left them buried by Fake News.

No matter. Colbert and co. cared more about “clapter” than penning funny bits.

They also ignored any Democrat behaving badly during Trump’s time in office. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s muddled hot takes? Never heard of her.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s marble-mouthed gaffes? Get her on the show, stat, and we’ll throw softball queries at her.

Late Night TV branded itself part of The Resistance, alienating half the country in the process. Kimmel, when asked how he felt about losing Republican viewers, said, “not good riddance, but riddance.”

Jimmy Kimmel on losing GOP viewers: ‘Not good riddance, but riddance’

So when Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, the various late-night shows couldn’t course correct. They continued mocking Trump and other GOP figures (like Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson), ignoring the current Commander in Chief and his gaffe-tastic Vice President, Kamala Harris.

Left-leaning viewers, no longer demanding anti-Trump gags like before, sought out other sources of humor.

And we have the proof to back that up.

RELATED: THESE ‘GUTFELD’ RATINGS SHOULD SCARE LATE NIGHT TV SILLY

TBS finally pulled the plug on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.” The show’s awful ratings could no longer be justified. Trevor Noah, who took the “Daily Show” baton from Jon Stewart in 2015, dragged that show’s ratings to the basement, too.

Now, he’s moving on to other gigs.

James Corden previously announced his exit from “The Late Late Show.” And Jimmy Kimmel flirted with leaving late-night altogether before re-upping with ABC.

Conan O’Brien quietly left the playing field last year. “Desus & Mero” fled their Showtime series after a personal conflict ended their partnership.

Now, NBC is threatening a major overhaul to its existing late-night lineup.

Company executives are in discussion to turn over the 10 p.m ET national broadcast to affiliates to air local content. A report in the New York Times says the move could see “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” start at 10:30 p.m., a move away from the traditional late-night start time of 11:35 pm.

Why? The Peacock network hopes to cut costs in the face of crashing ad revenue rates.

NBCUniversal also could kick “Late Night With Seth Meyers” to either MSNBC, a much better fit given that network’s liberal tilt, or its Peacock streaming platform.

Meanwhile, Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” the only show to reflect a right-leaning mindset, is crushing the late night competition without A-list stars or broadcast TV budgets.

Let’s recap.

James Corden, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee are all gone or heading to the exits. Conan O’Brien quit after decades in the trenches. A Fox News showcase is the new late-night TV leader. And NBC is mulling a major downgrade for its iconic “Tonight Show” brand, among other changes.

And Outkick notes the economic fallout from this shift.

The late-night shows on network television generated $253.6 million in advertising revenue through the first six months of 2022, down 16 percent from 2021. Notably, “Late Night With Seth Meyers” failed to reach the $20 million mark.

Sounds like Trump’s egotistic Tweet got it more or less right.

7 Comments

  1. If NBC gives up on the 10 PM time slot, giving it to the late local news so Jimmy Fallon can start at 10:30, that sounds like they have more confidence in Fallon than on any drama they could put on at 10 PM (“Chicago P.D.,” “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” etc.). It also sounds like the strategy they followed when Conan O’Brien got “The Tonight Show” at 11:35 while Jay Leno got to host “The Jay Leno Show” at 10 PM.

  2. I’m a professional comedy writer. I spent years writing a daily topical radio humor service and currently write for a top-rated cable show. It wasn’t Trump who killed late night comedy, although he definitely helped grease the skids to the graveyard. It was Comedy Central and “The Daily Show.” Their model of “smug liberal in suit, sitting at desk and condescendingly delivering DNC talking points” has infected every show in late night except “Gutfeld!” which is why it’s now the only one worth watching. These hosts toss in an occasional fanciful metaphor to signal that it’s supposed to be comedy, and their audiences of leftist trained seals clap instead of laugh, and that’s supposed to pass for “comedy.” They give themselves awards for this garbage.

    In fairness, I think Conan left because he didn’t like being political, he prefers silly and surreal. I think he felt he was being pressured into it, and his ratings were suffering because they’d winnowed down the late night audience to nothing but TDS sufferers who demanded their nightly 60-minute Trump hate. Fallon also strikes me as a reluctant leftist douchebag who’d rather be talking about something other than politics, like beer pong.

    If I were running the networks, I’d fire the lot of them and bring back actual funny people like Conan and Craig Ferguson, or their younger equivalents. I know Craig wouldn’t be interested, but I saw him live just last week, and he’s as hilarious as ever.

    1. You nailed it. I still like Conan, but have not watched in a while and it was news to me via this article today that he no longer is on. Fallon? You describe him perfectly and the rest of them too. I never went to late-nite comedy shows for political commentary. I went to have a laugh and these leftist prigs have no humor.

    2. I agree with your assessments completely. Too bad Saturday Night Live also destroyed itself with the same liberal smugness. The moment they started singing to Obama and Hillary (two songs, two different shows), I knew it was truly gone and never coming back.

      There’s a hunger for real comedy – the kind that pillories BOTH sides and pulls no punches. It would read as HONEST and truthful not as propaganda thinly disguised as entertainment.

  3. Could not have happened to a more pathetic bunch. I have not watched latenite TV in long time and especially not these past 5-7yrs. Leftist prigs. Good riddance.

  4. Late night has been dying for at least two decades. After Leno got the nod for The Tonight Show, Letterman went into a deep slide, and his schtick became as bitter as a gourd.

    Fallon was the only funny one among this crowd. Once they brought him to heel it all went downhill fast. Seth Myers (with his cow eyes) is so servile to Democrats that it’s basically propaganda at this point. His obsequious “interview” with Kamala last week was, perhaps, his nadir. And he had been plumbing the depths of the cellar for quite some time.

  5. The only thing wrong with this article is that it, again, misstates the beginning of the decline of late night comedy. It doesn’t trace back just to Trump. He was just the final nail in the coffin. It goes back to Obama. The liberal lapdog show hosts had to choose between doing their jobs and making fun of the president, who now happened to be a black man, or being too smitten and/or afraid to criticize him and undermining the entire premise of their shows. We know which way they went. They all seemed almost in love with Obama. But in reality I think they were, like every liberal, more in love with considering themselves morally upright because they worshipped him. This was the true origin of cancel culture. Nobody had to tell them what they couldn’t say. They willingly chose not to say it. And thus began the process of canceling themselves.

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