Comedian Jay Leno keeps hearing that he should pick a side, and he keeps declining. Leno, who hosted NBC’s “The Tonight Show” for more than two decades, said in an interview on the “Unexpired” podcast that he still takes criticism for keeping partisan material out of his act — and that the crowds he plays for are the reason.
Comics who work outside the late-night studio, he said, have to play rooms that hold every political persuasion, and his assignment in front of those crowds is to land jokes rather than hand down commentary.
“I get beat up for this all the time, but as someone who works in the real world, when you go to Indiana, I’m sorry, a third of your audience is going to be Trump people,” Leno said.
A Carson-Era Standard in a Split Room
Speaking with “Unexpired” host Kim Alexis, Leno said his goal onstage is still entertainment, and he recalled that he and former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson prided themselves on making fun of both sides equally. That even-handedness, he said, now draws criticism — and he said that was all right with him.
The position is not a new one for him. A few years ago, Leno said he had dropped politics from his stand-up altogether, because crowds had started demanding to know which side a joke favored before they would laugh at it. In a 2025 interview at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, he made much the same case, arguing that political humor lands best when people can laugh at a joke aimed at their own side.
Late Night Has Picked Its Audience, Critic Says
Christian Toto, an entertainment journalist and film critic who founded the entertainment site Hollywood in Toto in 2014, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday, September 16, that he sees the two corners of comedy pulling apart. Comics on the road, he said, still face politically mixed crowds, while television hosts have built audiences with a far clearer political identity.
“Late-night hosts don’t care who they alienate in 2026,” Toto said, adding that those hosts have chosen their audience.
He pointed to Jimmy Kimmel, host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” who has publicly acknowledged losing some Republican viewers as his program became more politically outspoken. Asked during a 2017 “CBS Sunday Morning” interview whether he minded Republicans walking away after his commentary on healthcare and gun policy, Kimmel replied: “Well, not good riddance, but riddance.”
Toto also raised “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon’s 2016 sit-down with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, in which Fallon reached over and tousled his guest’s hair. Fallon had a chance to become the next apolitical host who simply wanted to make the country laugh, Toto said, but was hounded by the media and the left afterward for humanizing the real estate mogul. In the years since, Fallon has said he wishes he had pushed back on the backlash more forcefully, and he rejected the notion that the moment was intended to normalize Trump.
Leno’s own tenure included its share of Trump appearances. Trump, then a real estate developer and now the president, sat down with him on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
Podcasts as the New Proving Ground
Leno has made a related point about where comedy audiences are heading. He told Deadline this summer that today’s crowds are politically scattered, and he has likened podcast host Joe Rogan to Carson, calling podcasts an increasingly important alternative to traditional late-night shows. The shift has reached political media as well, where online hosts are treated as political players in their own right.
The broadcast side of the business has been unsettled at the same time. Stephen Colbert, whose late-night show was canceled and who won an Emmy after the cancellation, appeared alongside Kimmel on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on September 15. Kimmel has said he felt defeated when Colbert’s show was axed.
For Leno, the argument has stayed the same through every retelling: the person who buys a ticket in a state like Indiana did not come for a verdict on the news, and a comic who forgets that is playing to a fraction of the room.