Politico is revealing why liberal late-night hosts go out of their way to avoid mocking President Joe Biden despite his repeated TV-worthy embarrassing gaffes.
Titled “Why Late Night Shows Won’t Roast Joe Biden,” Politico explains that despite being a "rich vein of material for late night or sketch comics,” comedians refuse to take jabs at Biden.
The publication pointed out that Biden receives soft treatment from liberal comedians, noting their “ultra-friendly exchanges” with the 81-year-old president.
“Biden is a rich vein of material for late-night or sketch comics. He arrived in the White House with a hard-earned reputation as a gaffe machine. The oldest president ever, he was first elected to the Senate during the era of eight-track tapes and rotary telephones. Since his ascendancy to the White House, he has fairly consistently stumbled over his own words, mixed up the names of world leaders and countries, and even physically stumbled on stage himself, tripping and falling at a U.S. Air Force graduation. His speaking style can be jarring: He can sound something like an old-timey preacher, delivering surprising anecdotes while vacillating between a yell and a whisper. For all his ripeness as a comic target, though, Biden has largely escaped the kind of pillorying that some of his predecessors got," Politico noted.
The article used "The Late Show’s" Stephen Colbert’s speech from the Hollywood elitist fundraiser for Biden’s 2024 campaign in New York a few weeks ago where the comedian railed against former President Donald Trump while thanking Biden for his “decency.”
Politico admitted that late-night hosts are more one-sided and cautious in their attacks on Biden.
“The Donald Trump era — in which liberal media consumers salivated over takedowns of the president — has prompted a sea change in comedy that has carried over to Biden’s presidency, with late-night hosts appearing to view themselves as bulwarks against Trump, careful not to let their humor be perceived as advancing his interests in any way,” the article continued.
On the contrary, Trump is a “flashing target for late-night hosts and writers.”
Politico highlighted a particular scene from a 2016 Jimmy Fallon episode where the host tousled Trump’s hair. Fallon received backlash from critics who claimed he “was mainstreaming a man who gleefully defied the norms of American politics and demonized immigrants by treating him like a goofy office holder or a garden-variety celebrity.”
“The reaction laid bare the new rules of late-night comedy — that hosts couldn’t think of Trump as just any politician anymore, nor could they think of themselves as simple comics. Their viewers demanded something different: sharper, more directed attacks,” the article read.
According to a Media Research Center Study, 81 percent of political jokes made by mainstream late-night hosts targeted conservatives.
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