This is a refreshing moment of sanity from Hollywood. Actor Vince Vaughn nailed exactly why late-night television is failing, and it's all political.
As Townhall noted back in January, 99 percent of late-night guests were liberal for the last six months of 2025. It was the same for the first six months of 2025 and the last six months of 2024, too. The study looked at "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," "Late Night with Seth Meyers," "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," and "The Daily Show."
And when it came to partisan officials, the shows had 31 Democrats and zero Republicans. Stephen Colbert led the pack with 17 Democratic politicians.
Rather than focusing on entertainment, late-night television turned into another campaign arm of the DNC.
Vaughn shared those thoughts on Theo Von's podcast.
Vince Vaughn is criticizing late night TV shows for having political agendas: "You don’t want to become part of a group and feel like you’re a champion for one ideology. You want to make fun of everybody."
— Variety (@Variety) March 24, 2026
“The podcasts have gotten so much more popular with less production,… pic.twitter.com/wDdMNaffhx
Von said Hollywood is a “liberal place” and Vaughn added an addendum: “But not really. It’s more like, ‘We’re smart and got it figured out, and if you don’t agree then you’re an idiot.'” He continued, “There was definitely a culture that if you didn’t agree with these ideas, you were looked at as bad.”
This attitude, said Von and Vaughn, bled into the late-night TV landscape, plaguing the programs hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and more. (Vaughn and Von did not name names.)
“A lot of the late shows have struggled because … the only person they could make fun of at a certain point was white, redneck kind of people, and then everything tanked after that,” said Von.
“The podcasts have gotten so much more popular with less production, less writers, less staff. And the reason is … people want authenticity,” added Vaughn. “The talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based. They were going to [evangelize] people to what they thought. And so people just rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic. It felt like they had an agenda. It stopped being funny, and it started feeling like I was in a f***ing class I didn’t want to take. I’m getting scolded.”
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Politics is downstream of culture, too.
At least one person in Hollywood with a functioning brain
— Rob Schmitt (@SchmittNYC) March 24, 2026
There are a handful more who are openly conservative and/or sane.
He’s right. There’s a whole big world out there to make jokes about and late night shows Ignore it in order to drive an agenda. It’s boring
— Bleu Cheque (@VERBAL_CHANCLA) March 25, 2026
People watch television, sports, and movies to escape politics. Democrats infuse it into everything.
He’s right. They are not funny. Hit both sides equally hard. Even Johnny Carson’s closest friends didn’t know how he voted.
— Jefferson Bailey (@JeffersonBaile6) March 25, 2026
They don't make them like Carson anymore.
He’s absolutely right. Late night shows are just leftist lectures now. They lost sight of entertaining and are way more concerned with virtue-signaling and shouting into the echo chamber. https://t.co/tO0QRxXQJi
— Amala Ekpunobi (@amalaekpunobi) March 25, 2026
Podcasts are also political, but they're open about it and entertaining. Joe Rogan's podcast has a wide range of guests and topics, unlike late-night shows, which skew hard Left and aren't particularly funny anymore.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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