How liberals lost comedy − and helped Trump win

Donald Trump has long been fodder for late-night TV hosts − but he got the last laugh during the 2024 election. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, reproductive rights were an electoral vulnerability for Donald Trump. Though popular with the Republican base, his appointment of antiabortion judges gave serious pause to many key voting blocs, including undecided young men.

In pursuit of these voters, Trump’s strategy wasn’t demagoguery but comedy.

Trump’s October appearance on comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast, “Flagrant,” demonstrated his approach to the touchy issue.

Schulz playfully invoked Trump’s youngest son, who’s a student at New York University – “Barron is 18. He’s unleashed in New York City. Are you sure you want to reverse Roe vs. Wade now?” After a beat, Trump laughed, Schulz laughed, and then, presumably, thousands of young male listeners joined in.

Trump continued with boilerplate answers about states rights, but this substance – as is so often the case – was divorced from the strategy. Schulz had helped Trump turn an unpopular position into a frat boy punchline, something to be discarded along with last night’s empties. Trump won that media cycle and, ultimately, a majority of the votes of young men on his way to a second White House win.

Podcaster Andrew Schulz pokes fun at the touchy issue of abortion in an interview with Donald Trump on Oct. 9, 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris, by contrast, appeared on mainstream comedy shows with aging, liberal audiences like “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Pundits criticized her failure to engage young voters in online comedy platforms. They also urged liberals to develop a new crop of political comedians to match the influence of Schulz and podcaster Joe Rogan.

However, these criticisms of Harris’ strategy miss the failure of liberal comedians to evolve with media and political trends.

While Jimmy Kimmel cries and Jon Stewart rants, the right wing in the U.S. has successfully depicted itself as the new home for free speech and cutting edge comedy. We explored this development in our book, “That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them.”

The right has become a home for comedians not by making political arguments through jokes, but by positing that there are funnier things to do than to argue.

A formula goes stale

Liberal comedy and political satire have stuck to the same formula of Stewart’s “The Daily Show” for much of the 21st century.

It goes something like this: A sarcastic, eloquent host uses meticulously researched data to describe a pressing social issue, and then delivers a punchline directed at right-wing hypocrisy. The resultant pairing of righteous laughter and anger has been repeated by “The Colbert Report,” “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,” among other comedy programs.

These satirical shows filled the void left by an increasingly profit-driven news media. However, they have come to prioritize political preaching at the expense of laughs.

Perhaps Stewart’s most successful successor – and the best example of liberal satire’s patronizing tone – is HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Because the show appears on prestige cable, Oliver has a bigger budget to tackle controversial topics in depth.

Indeed, journalists and academics alike have celebrated the “John Oliver effect,” in which viewers mobilize behind a cause shortly after the host devotes an episode to it, whether it’s vaccines or internet regulation.

Oliver’s long-form lectures can be compelling. However, his appeal is not to young undecided voters who can’t afford HBO, but to college-educated liberals predisposed to support progressive reforms.

Twice in a recent election postmortem episode, he reminded viewers of topics his show has covered in depth, like a professor chiding students for not remembering recent lessons. In one segment about Trump’s disingenuous economic message, Oliver pleaded that his show had already “explained inflation for 24 human minutes.”

While Oliver’s exasperation can be amusing, he’s clearly more upset at – even disdainful of – the American electorate, chastising them for failing the final exam of election night.

For liberals to reconnect with young voters – especially young men – we think they have to reinvent political comedy. Doing so will mean moving beyond the haranguing that has long been its primary delivery style. This will be a challenge, however, as the right fortifies the relationship between its own comedians and political power.

Comedians like John Oliver and Jon Stewart tend to appeal to college-educated liberals predisposed to support progressive reforms.
Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central

Rise of the right-wing comedy complex

Trump’s success with comedy is a result of the new relationship between digital media and the business of joking. For decades, liberals were thought to hold a monopoly on comedy. Moreover, there was little money to be made in comedy acts devoted to right-wing politics.

Since 2016, however, a new crop of right-wing comedians has taken to digital platforms and algorithmically driven audience targeting in order to change this reality.

Libertarian podcasters like Rogan have long danced around the political spectrum, finding diverse positions that intrigue his primary target of young male listeners. He routinely platforms right-leaning cultural and comedic voices, features them as guests, and promotes their shows and products. In doing so, he has helped create a de facto right-wing comedy network.

Although each comedian or show in this network doesn’t have the audience and impact of, say, “The Daily Show” in its prime, their aggregate strength is precisely targeted at coveted young consumers and potential voters.

It is no coincidence that the most heralded stops on Trump’s October podcast tour were shows hosted by three regulars on “The Joe Rogan Experience”: Schulz, comedian Theo Von and libertarian scientist Lex Fridman. Trump also appeared on Rogan’s show for a three-hour episode.

Changing styles and platforms

Importantly, the type of political comedy featured on these programs is distinct from that of liberal satire of the past two decades.

“The Daily Show,” “Last Week” and their ilk dazzle viewers in 30-minute episodes using intricate arguments and sardonic punchlines.

Rogan and his affiliates hang out for hours, and audiences can listen as they go about their daily routines. In the process, podcast hosts shape their audience’s taste in culture, technology and recreation in what’s known as parasocial bonding.

Trump’s appearance on Von’s podcast “This Past Weekend,” for example, featured little in the way of biting jokes and rollicking laughter. Instead, Von and Trump held a meandering conversation full of funny, personal anecdotes about drug use interspersed with gestures to political topics.

Comedy styles are cyclical. In the 1950s, stand-up comedian Mort Sahl would read a newspaper on stage, peppering in sarcastic observations about the day’s headlines. The Smothers Brothers played with yo-yos before they introduced protest songs. The apolitical observational humor of Jerry Seinfeld reigned supreme in the 1980s and ’90s.

The 2000s liberal satire of Stewart and Oliver was driven by cable television industry mandates to court young men. The tastes and media habits of this audience have moved on, but liberal comedy has failed to follow them.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.