Donald Trump doesn’t like comedians, especially those who dare make jokes about him. During his first term, he wondered how “Saturday Night Live” got away with what he called “total Republican hit jobs without retribution.” Since returning to office, his administration has actively targeted late night TV hosts. When “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was cancelled, Trump immediately gloated on social media, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” This was less inside Hollywood gossip than an outright threat, which FCC Chair Brendan Carr delivered on when he pressured ABC into suspending Kimmel for remarks he made on his show about MAGA’s response to Charlie Kirk’s murder.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said, sounding like someone who watched “Goodfellas” too often.
This assault on free speech delighted Trump, who posted on social media, “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”
Seth Meyers, who hosts NBC’s “Late Night,” is a vocal Trump critic. “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon tried making nice with MAGA — Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld was a recent guest — but he’s still in Trump’s crosshairs.
Right-wing media has advanced the narrative that Colbert and Kimmel were yanked primarily because of declining ratings. While it’s true that late night talk shows have struggled over the years, as audiences turn more to streaming, MAGA invokes ratings as a cover for Trump’s transparently thin skin.
Of course, Trump lacks any genuine sense of humor, which requires a degree of humility and capacity for self-deprecation that he doesn’t possess. Past presidents might not have trolled their political opponents on social media, but they were far more capable of appreciating jokes made at their expense. In a letter to the Smothers Brothers, Lyndon B. Johnson wrote, “It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”
Dana Carvey lampooned George H.W. Bush on Saturday Night Live, but Bush invited Carvey to the White House Christmas party in 1992. George W. Bush complimented Will Ferrell’s skewering of him on SNL. Bill Clinton reportedly appreciated the SNL parodies of himself. However, Trump couldn’t tolerate SNL mocking him. He whined that the SNL was part of NBC’s overall “unfair news coverage” (it’s a comedy show) and this “should be tested in courts, can’t be legal?” This was not the only time Trump would forget the First Amendment exists.
Trump’s issues with Kimmel far predates Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Rolling Stone reported that in early 2018 Trump was so enraged over Kimmel’s jabs at him that he ordered White House officials to call top executives at Disney, which owns ABC, and complain.
During his first monologue back after his suspension, Kimmel said, “Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”
Now, compare Trump’s thin-skin to Vance’s callous response last year when former Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caitlin “Caite” Upton was caught in the crossfire of one of his anti-Harris screeds. He outright refused to “apologize for posting a joke.”
“What I’d say is, one bad moment shouldn’t define anybody, and the best way to deal with this stuff is to laugh at ourselves,” Vance said.
This might seem absurdly hypocritical after what happened to Colbert and Kimmel, but a consistent element of the MAGA philosophy is that no one is ever allowed to laugh at them. Trump clearly doesn’t know the difference between actual jokes and vicious insults, as indicated from his scorched-earth routines against Clinton and Harris at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in 2016 and 2024. It’s why Trump and MAGA show no grace for any barbs directed their way.
Perhaps the major turning point in modern political history is Obama roasting Trump at the 2012 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Trump’s fragile ego viewed Obama’s jokes as a personal assault. (Watch below.)
Trump insists that any criticism of himself and the worst excesses of his supporters is a deliberate broadside against half the nation. MAGA quickly seized on Joe Biden’s unfortunate eleventh-hour election gaffe when he told Latino supporters, “And just the other day, a speaker at [Trump’s Madison Square Garden] rally called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something … The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
Note that what Biden said was treated as a serious insult, not a wacky sitcom one liner. Democrats quickly distanced themselves from the remarks, which only fueled MAGA’s tedious victim complex. Yet, Trump has repeatedly called Democrats “scum” and “fascists,” and we are expected to just take the “joke.” He gets to exist in a long-running political sitcom, while we are trapped in an ongoing tragedy.
We’re far past the point where anyone can charitably call Trump’s social media messages and offensive remarks at his rallies “jokes.” They always reflect concrete actions. Trump has perpetuated a scam where he masks his cruelty and moral perversion behind a flimsy veneer of levity, but it’s no laughing matter.
“I mean that son of a bitch, you know, is really unbelievable,” Kimmel told Colbert during a guest appearance on The Late Show. “No, I never imagined that we’d ever have a president like this. And I hope we don’t ever have another president like this again.”
That’s not a punchline, but it deserves applause.
At the root of all this is Trump’s deep insecurity because despite what some of his critics say, he is very much aware of his shortcomings. He knows he’s stupid (and also may in fact have a severe learning disability that went untreated because he was afraid of his father finding out—notice how he cannot really read large passages), he’s obese, he’s uninteresting, and he’s long failed at various ventures only to be bailed out. He’s had to purchase his wives, he’s had to molest and rape because he knows no way to get consensual sex from those he wanted it from. His life has been a lot of humiliation. Even now he knows he’s being manipulated by human skin suits like Stephen Miller, who has his one chance to kill brown people.
And he never learned the grace to laugh about it, because he’s always seen these things as severe faults that he cannot overcome….even when twice becoming the most powerful man on earth.
Notice that the ratings obsessed trump rarely mentions his poll numbers, which are in the toilet, and when he does, he lies about them. And when he gets someone canceled or suspended (Kimmel was never canceled, so trump lied about that too), he gloats about it and claims that they have low ratings without backing up that claim. He wants the credit, but not really, because he's a coward. Both Colbert and Kimmel post clips of their shows online, and those are getting a lot of views, probably better than the broadcast shows.
A bigger point - trump wants us to fear him, but if people make jokes at his expense, and we all are laughing with them laughing AT him, we can't be afraid of him. Fear is paralyzing, humor helps alleviate fear and the resulting paralysis. No wonder trump hates late night comedians - they are helping many Americans not to be afraid, and to not let the fascists take over the country.