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This year hinted strongly at the end of a broadcast network era for the late-night comedy show. CBS made the bold move of declaring they were granting just one more season to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” In the Johnny Carson era, his show dominated the air space. Today, the “comedians” are catering to a leftist audience in what sounds like group therapy.
President Donald Trump’s re-election strongly signaled that the ever-cascading mockery of the “Orange Man” didn’t keep him from winning. But liberal pundits still equated comedians with democracy. On ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin dramatically proclaimed that this decision to stop losing money on Colbert wasn’t financial (as CBS claimed). “This is the dismantling of our democracy. This is the dismantling of our Constitution.” She broke out that old saw about liberals “speaking truth to power.” But they never speak truth to “power” when their favorites win. They didn’t “speak truth” when former President Joe Biden was obviously in cognitive decline.
The most memorable moments from late-night comedians in 2025 were irredeemably nasty. Take Jon Stewart during his Mondays-only gig on “The Daily Show,” mocking the free market in February. “Capitalism is by definition exploitative. It’s how it operates. That’s fine. But then government’s role should be to ease the negative effects on Americans of that exploitation, not subsidize that treachery with our money. We are getting [bleeped] at a Diddy party and they’re making us buy the baby oil!”
That’s not as nasty as Stewart’s old underling John Oliver on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” in March, disparaging former President Ronald Reagan. “I will admit there are positive things you can say about Reagan, like ‘He was our only president to make a movie with a chimp,’ or ‘He’s dead.’ But his moral clarity might come as a surprise to any gay people who lived through the 1980s. I’m just saying, if you brought Reagan back from the dead and told him all the racist shit Trump’s managed to do in less than two months, he’d cum so hard he’d die again.”
JIMMY KIMMEL SAYS TYRANNY RISING UNDER TRUMP, TAUNTS PRESIDENT OVER SHOW’S RETURN
The late-night guests knew how to echo their hosts. When Trump took over operations at the Kennedy Center, actor Nathan Lane uncorked a rant on the Colbert show, mocking what Trump would feature on stage. “Like tomorrow night they have a youth choir made up entirely of Elon Musk’s children. Because ‘Hamilton’ canceled its engagement, they are producing Lee Greenwood’s all-rap musical tribute to Ronald Reagan starring Kanye West. It’s called ‘Trickle Down.’ That’s followed by a new production of ‘The Sound of Music’ told from the point of view of the Nazis. Trust me, trust me, you don’t want to hear the list of their favorite things.”
Even America itself was trashed for re-electing Trump. British actor Alan Cumming performed a superiority dance in July on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. “America, how are you doing? No, really, how are you doing? I mean, how are you doing aside from being a country that has just reintroduced concentration camps, taken healthcare away from 17 million people to give billionaires a tax cut, and also to finance an armed militia of masked men that commits heinous assorted kidnapping and crimes against humanity on a daily basis? Aside from all that, are you okay? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
This might help people understand why these shows are sinking in the ratings. You have to be a special category of hater to end your day with these rants. Alex Christy at NewsBusters found that 92% of the political jokes told on broadcast late-night shows were about conservatives, up from 82% in 2024. The guest list was even worse, almost unanimously left-wing, 99% of the time: 196 liberals to just two conservatives. Jimmy Fallon’s chat with Greg Gutfeld stuck out for how remarkably rare it was.
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The worst late-night moment of the year was obviously Jimmy Kimmel’s brazen lie about the political views of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
It was a new low all right. It was a time for mourning, not mockery and lies. Two station-affiliate groups decided to refuse to air Kimmel’s show, so ABC shut it down … for four programs. Four reruns of “Family Feud.” But the elitist media had a month’s worth of tantrums. CNN host Jake Tapper proclaimed on the Seth Meyers show, “I thought it was pretty much the most direct infringement by the government on free speech that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
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Kimmel ended the year by being awarded the “Alternative Christmas Message” on Britain’s Channel 4, where, just like his guest Alan Cumming, Kimmel knocked America as a “right mess” a crumbling democracy in a nation full of dummies. “We are not bright. We’re Americans. No one knows better than you, we’re always just a little bit late to the game, but do we come through in the end? Maybe. Give us about three years. Please.”
ABC extended Kimmel’s contract by only one year, because there’s only so much money a business wants to lose for someone’s fiercely nasty “freedom of speech.” Kimmel could still follow Colbert out the door since he’s not into broadcasting, only narrowcasting.
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