Two weeks ago, the night after Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid at Mar-a-Lago, Stephen Colbert recapped the occasion with clear reluctance. Colbert, who for two years has refused to say the former president’s name on The Late Show, confessed to not watching Trump’s speech – “I pay some sucker to do that for me,” he quipped – but nevertheless devoted the bulk of his monologue to what he called “2016 all over again”. “I get it, but you’re going to want to pace yourself,” he told his booing audience. “Those boos need to last for two years.”
It was a typically conflicted performance from a host who has often served as the mean for late-night comedians’ response to Donald Trump’s presence in American politics. It was Colbert who, on election night 2016, openly mourned Trump’s victory on live television and prefaced the identity crisis to come for late-night talk shows: “I’m not sure it’s a comedy show any more.” For four years, nightly comedy shows – Colbert’s Late Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! – cycled through a deadening Trump feedback loop. Trump says or does deranged or dangerous thing, hosts mock; Trump lashes out on Twitter or elsewhere, hosts lash back with righteousness; insert joke about his diet or covfefe or loveless marriage to Melania, repeat.
