Transcript: Why Trump Is Afraid of Colbert, Kimmel, and “The View” |
Transcript: Why Trump Is Afraid of Colbert, Kimmel, and “The View”
Political scientist Meredith Conroy says that late-night comedy shows have long played an important role in American politics.
This is a lightly edited transcript of the May 21 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
This is part of Right Now’s ongoing cover of media in the Trump era, including a discussion on the temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and an exploration of why the right has been much smarter than the left in developing media strategies.
Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of Right Now on The New Republic. We’re talking today on the last day Stephen Colbert will be hosting his show on CBS, because CBS decided to cancel it. So we’re talking to Meredith Conroy. She’s a professor of political science at Cal State University San Bernardino, and she’s an expert on media and politics and the intersection of the two. So I want to talk to her about late-night TV and its role in politics. Meredith, welcome back.
Meredith Conroy: Thanks. Great to be here.
Bacon: So I want to go through a few what I’m going to call almost a history of seminal moments of late-night TV and politics. And rather than ask you questions, I want to go through the moment and describe it how I saw it, and then have you react to it. Because I think you and I are in the same age range—I’m not aging you—but we’re in the same range and we probably have some of the same cultural references, so we’ll do it that way.
Conroy: OK, that sounds great.
Bacon: All right. So I’m going to start with 1992. A lot of people in communications and politics say this is the big moment when late night becomes a part of politics on some level. This is when Bill Clinton is running in 1992, and he goes on Arsenio Hall.
Arsenio Hall was a late-night talk show host—he’s African American, and I think that’s relevant to this conversation. So Bill Clinton goes on and plays the saxophone, and it’s a moment where he appears more natural, very charismatic, casual. It’s the first time, I think, a major candidate has been on one of those shows.
And I know it was a big moment because my mom mentioned it to me yesterday. We were talking about politicians she viewed as charismatic—and maybe handsome, even—and she mentioned Bill Clinton when he was running and playing the saxophone. So this really resonated, even years and years later. Did you watch this? Talk about Arsenio Hall and Bill Clinton—which I did not watch, because I was 12, but looking back, I know what it was.
Conroy: Yeah. I also don’t think I watched—I think I was nine. But as you mentioned, in political communication, people who study late night—it’s always the first example in any academic article. They always start with Clinton on Arsenio.
And like you said, the effect of that was that he was likable, personal—his image was softened for a broader audience who may not necessarily be politically attentive, which academic research shows that the late-night audiences historically have been less attentive to politics, and late-night shows are a gateway for that attention.
We call that incidental exposure—by watching a late-night show where you might not expect to be encountering politics, you do. And I’m sure in the ‘90s that was especially the case. Leno and Carson certainly had made political jokes, but I think with Clinton on Arsenio, that sort of solidified the necessity for political candidates to campaign by going on these late-night shows with audiences that were different than 60 Minutes.
But that’s interesting that your mom talked about how she really liked him because of that appearance. Those appearances, I think, have that effect. I remember—I’m already jumping ahead to The Daily Show—but I remember watching The Daily Show and seeing, I think it was Huckabee, play bass on the show.
Bacon: I think Huckabee is more of a musician type, if I remember correctly. I think you’re probably- this is when he ran in ‘08 or ran in ‘08 I think.
Conroy: I should have confirmed that, but I remember being like, “Wow, he is coming off incredibly likable.” They’re doing a talent that’s unrelated to politics, and it’s just a different environment. It really can change the way that people see these candidates. What else should we say about Clinton’s appearance on Arsenio?
Bacon: So I’m going to jump to another one. I’m going to jump to 2003—about 10 years later. I actually did watch this one. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for governor, and he announced this on the Jay Leno show. That was very funny at the time, and kind of funny now, although he was actually a pretty decent governor.
But anyway, he goes on—and he and Jay Leno are friends, in part because they’re both in Hollywood. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an actor, for people who don’t know—and is an actor, I should say. And so he went on and announced his candidacy on Jay Leno, and then went on to win the governorship. That was another big moment—the first time, I think, somebody had really formally announced their candidacy on one of these shows.
Conroy: Yeah. It made sense—an actor, like you said, in the state of California. And the Tonight Show is in Burbank, as opposed to Letterman, which is in New York. I definitely watched Leno as a kid. There were the Leno-Letterman wars, where you liked one or the other. I grew up—I would stay up to watch Jay Leno.
And yeah, I remember that moment as well. I think it made sense for his campaign for those reasons we just said. But again, a moment that, like you said, was probably the first. I wouldn’t be surprised if a candidate since has announced that they’re running on a late-night talk show. And I know we’re going to talk about this—given how much more political these shows have become, and that Democratic politicians in particular actively want to be on these shows. So yeah, I’m sure that’s changed. But Schwarzenegger is a Republican running in the state of California.
Bacon: It should be noted because we’re conceding that now Democrats might announce on a comedy show. But back then, Schwarzenegger is a Republican—he was a sort of more moderate version. He and Leno—I think Leno actually got criticized later on for being too favorable to Schwarzenegger because they were friendly and so on. Also, Leno’s politics are probably kind of center-ish anyway.
Conroy: Yeah. One other—Trump went on with Jimmy Fallon, and Fallon famously ruffled his hair. But I think that appearance was probably one of the last times you saw a Republican that aligns themselves with Trump going on these shows.
Conroy: But I jumped too far ahead. Are there other ones you want to talk about?
Bacon: So I guess the next thing I want to talk about is Jon Stewart and The Daily Show in the early 2000s. That show became really big from 2003 to 2008. I remember there was a moment in the 2007–2008 campaign—I was covering Biden, who was running for vice president by this time, and I was on the road with Biden. Biden was making all these gaffes, and my editor was like, The Daily Show featured Joe Biden’s gaffes—that means it’s really big now, we should do a story about it.
To the point where, particularly among liberals, Jon Stewart in that period from ‘03 to ‘08 was almost an assignment editor. That show was really seminal for liberals in that period. Does that seem right to you?
Conroy: Yeah. I think it was a can’t-miss for college-educated audiences. I don’t know how liberal the audiences were. There’s some academic research looking at who watched The Daily Show, and it did tend to be people who were already highly attentive. Because one of the debates in political science was whether or not The Daily Show in particular, and other mock news shows, created cynicism.
And there was even a special issue in a political science journal where they had mock debates and a mock trial, putting Jon Stewart on trial to argue about whether or not he was creating cynicism. And one of the debates was, he’s creating skepticism but not necessarily cynicism.
But yeah, it was a can’t-miss for myself when I was in undergrad and graduate school. You just didn’t miss it—you had to watch it in order to have conversations with your friends the next day.
Bacon: Did you learn from it, or did you already—was it more humorous, or did you actually learn stuff? Did you see things for the first time there?
Conroy: I learned a lot. And there have been studies that show that people did actually, from late night and those satirical shows, become more interested in the news as a result of watching.
Because the people who watched The Daily Show probably already were highly informed in the first place, but it did lead to additional news-seeking from more traditional sources. So there were positive effects, learning effects.
I learned a lot, and then when I went on to be a professor, I am not ashamed to admit that I used—I had the DVDs. Remember the Indecision series?
Conroy: So every election they had Indecision 2004, Indecision 2008. I wore those DVDs out for my students, because I thought that satire is a vehicle for understanding a lot of what our politics is. And so I learned a lot, and I think my students did too. And then Jon Stewart even had a fake American government textbook—did you know this?
Conroy: A physical copy of an American government textbook, organized just like any other American government textbook—yeah, mocking government, mostly.
But we should say The Daily Show—originally, I think their main foil was the media. Over time, they came to mock politicians, and I think The Colbert Report in particular targeted politicians more—especially, they brought them on the show and just mocked them to their faces in those “Better Know a District” series. But I think The Daily Show’s main target was you—the media. And that’s a useful vehicle or way to stay more neutral politically, when your target is the media, which is universally—
Bacon: I’m trying to remember now, because I remember Jon Stewart went on—there was a show called Crossfire, and Jon Stewart went on it to mock the idea that they made every issue Democrat versus Republican. But what was their—on The Daily Show itself—what was their critique of the media in the early phase? I don’t totally remember. On what grounds were they critiquing the media?
Conroy: They would definitely go after Fox News and the way that they used sound and images and eagles and flags and iconic American imagery to make people feel something. So I think Fox in particular was their primary source of ridicule. I do think they took on MSNBC as well—cable news, essentially. They would have lots of montages of either doublespeak or these mock debates where no one is really saying anything.
And so I wonder if his Crossfire episode—which probably people watching this or who do watch this know about—I used to show that in class as well. He takes down Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for having a performative discussion and not a real discussion. And I’m sure that once he saw—that was one of those videos that........