The big boys of late-night are competitors, but they’re also friends. And despite Trump’s threats, they’ll back each other and keep the jokes coming.
The arena of late-night comedy is a cutthroat one, with warring timeslots and competing comedians jockeying for a slice of the viewership pie. But when one of their own is threatened, the pack rises to the occasion.
We saw that this week when « Jimmy Kimmel Live! » got hit with a suspension from ABC following his comments on the killing of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk. And that happened, too, when « The Late Show with Stephen Colbert » was slated for cancellation.
For a hot minute this week, when ABC appeared to cave to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, President Donald Trump looked to be gaining ground in his war on late-night comedy. The president hasn’t been shy about how much talk-show hosts and comedians annoy him. He has called them talentless and urged their networks to fire them.
Yet they’re still here — for now — and they won’t shut up.Late-night is a unified front
Stewart, the long-time late-night great, approached the Kimmel issue head-on in two monologues in the last week. On Thursday’s episode of ‘The Daily Show », he put on a satire-laden dedication to America’s « great leader » Trump, blasting the administration’s stance on free speech.
And on Monday, Stewart went all-in with his commentary on Trump. In his monologue, he joked about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, an ongoing PR nightmare for the Trump administration.
