Leave politics to the politicians and just get on with being entertaining. That’s the advice iconic late night talk show host Jay Leno gave when he joined David Trulio, the president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, to dissect his approach to political humor.
The 75-year-old reflected on his time as a successful host of The Tonight Show for over two decades and why his loyal audience always stuck around and came back for more while contemporary hosts just seem keen on alienating half the country.
Fox News reports the pair agreed partisan politics simply gets in the way of keeping an audience engaged and – crucially – laughing.
“I read that there was an analysis done of your work on ‘The Tonight Show’ for the 22 years and that your jokes were roughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats. Did you have a strategy?” Trulio posited.
“It was fun to me when I got hate letters [like] ‘Dear Mr. Leno, you and your Republican friends’ and ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy‘ — over the same joke,” Leno recalled.
‘And I go, ’Well, that’s good,’” he said. “That’s how you get a whole audience.”
Leno noted how late night comedy has changed amid the current divisive political landscape and sought to divide rather than seek common ground.
“Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have [to] give your opinion,” Leno said.
Leno noted back in 2019 the divisive nature of politics on late night entertainment shows simply alienates people, saying he does not “miss” hosting late-night shows, adding the overly political left-wing rhetoric was ruining the humor, as Breitbart News reported.
“I don’t miss it. You know, everything now is, if people don’t like your politics, they — everyone has to know your politics,” Jay Leno told the Today show. “When people see you as one-sided, it just makes it tough.”
Leno’s latest comments come amid the uproar that followed CBS announcing it was canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with the show’s final episode scheduled to air in May 2026.
Read the full Fox News report here
