Late Night With Donald Trump: Political Humor and America's Top Comedy Target

• In Event: The Public Presidency

Abstract

The Trump presidency so far has been marked by a massive expansion of the attention being paid to the White House by late-night comics, far greater than the amount of humor targeting Barack Obama and George W. Bush during their first years in office. The unprecedented nature of the Trump presidency has also generated an expanded policy role for the late night comics, as shown by the substantive issue-oriented conversations offered by Jimmy Kimmel and others regarding health care reform and other high-profile policy topics, as well as the increased volume of president-focused humor. Using a content analysis of nightly host monologues and a qualitative study of the once-a-week humorists to content analysis of daily comedy host monologues employed for previous late-night humor research projects, this study examines how the late-night humorists have responded to the Trump presidency and examines how the comics’ treatment of Trump differs from that afforded previous presidents during their first years in office.

Authors

• Stephen J. Farnsworth, University of Mary Washington

• S. Robert Lichter, George Mason University