New York – Stephen Colbert, whose crude reference to Donald Trump angered some of the president’s supporters this week, has lobbed zingers at him at the blistering pace of 3.37 a day during the chief executive’s first 100 days in office.
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Trump is on pace to be the most joked-about president in late-night television in at least 25 years, the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University said Thursday.
Colbert, on his show Wednesday, discussed the fallout from a Trump joke two days earlier that prompted calls to fire him and boycott the CBS “Late Show” advertisers. He said he didn’t regret insulting the president, but that “I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be.”
Colbert said he was upset at Trump for insulting CBS “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson.
It was one of 337 Trump jokes that Colbert has made since the president’s inauguration in January, the study said. Trevor Noah of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” made 315 Trump jokes in the same period of time, NBC’s Jimmy Fallon unleashed 231 and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel 177.
The Trump-battering has paid off handsomely for Colbert and CBS. The “Late Show” eclipsed Fallon’s “Tonight” show in the ratings shortly after Trump’s inauguration and has now won 13 weeks straight. Last week CBS averaged 2.74 million viewers to Fallon’s 2.68 million, the Nielsen company said.
Nielsen’s preliminary ratings from the nation’s top markets indicates that Colbert’s show Wednesday night slightly exceeded the previous Wednesday — indicating no immediate fallout from the Putin joke.
“The polarization of politics has migrated into the polarization of late-night humor,” said Robert Lichter, the George Mason professor who directs the comedy content research. “People want to hear jokes about the politicians they don’t like.”
That in itself turns some conventional wisdom on its head: for years many late-night comics made it a point to be equal opportunity abusers for fear of turning off one side or another, he said.
Trump has been the target of some 1,060 late-night jokes since taking office, the study said. That puts him on pace to beat President Bill Clinton’s record of 1,717 jokes in 1998, the year his affair with Monica Lewinsky was in the news, Lichter said.
Colbert, for his part, isn’t taking any pity on the president.
“He, I believe, can take care of himself,” Colbert said Wednesday. “I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So, it’s a fair fight.”
The jokes are intelligent, many can be appreciated only by an informed audience, and they generally are hilarious. That said, they reflect a serious anxiety, which I share, that Trump and his circle are the most uninformed, reckless and potentially dangerous administration that this country has ever seen.
The monologue is available on youtube. It has one graphically homosexual joke, with the bad word bleeped out, so that possuls the entire video, which is a shame, because it was otherwise very funny.
I don’t think first two commenters will be laughing if the joke was on them.
I watch him the next day online. He is HYSTERICALLY FUNNY ! ALWAYS !
Liberals only find it funny because Trump is the subject matter. They didn’t find late night TV that funny when Clinton was president.
This is why I don’t watch television. If this was funny so is joking about the holocaust. It is not funny and today social is mentally ill and need therapy to enjoy real comedians like George Burn, Jack Benny
Colbert has major league problems, his father and two brothers were killed in a plane crash when he was a youngster and nebech it affected this guy badly.
Jokes can be funny regardless of who is being made fun of. If you do not like a late night comic – don’t watch them. They make fun of everybody.
The advantage that they have is that they do not have to be Politically Correct. They can make fun of hypocrisy and lies straight out.
The main stream media can’t laugh at Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts. But late night comedians have a field day with it. That goes for all the lies that Politicians tell – whether democrat or republican.