Jimmy Kimmel told his Republican viewers "not good riddance, but riddance" – on camera.
Now the ratings are in, and Jay Leno is the only comedian in Hollywood willing to say what they prove.
Leno just told a podcast what every conservative already knew about late-night TV.
What Leno Said That Has Hollywood Furious
"I get beat up for this all the time, but as someone who works in the real world, when you go to Indiana, I'm sorry, a third of your audience is going to be Trump people," Leno said on the "Unexpired" podcast this week.
He's been saying it for years.
At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last year, Leno explained that he and Johnny Carson built their careers on a simple principle: make fun of both sides.
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Both of them got hate mail from Democrats calling them Republican puppets and hate mail from Republicans calling them Democrat puppets.
That meant they were doing it right.
"Johnny and I used to pride ourselves on making fun of both sides equally," Leno said. "Now I get beaten up for that."
Hollywood's entire media apparatus now treats equal-opportunity comedy as a thought crime.
And Leno keeps selling out shows in Indiana.
What Happened When Kimmel Chose His Side
On CBS Sunday Morning in 2017, a host asked Kimmel whether he minded losing Republican viewers after his show became a nightly platform for Democratic talking points.
He didn't dance around it.
"Not good riddance, but riddance," Kimmel said.
The audience took him at his word.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged roughly 2.5 million viewers during its peak years.
By 2025, that number had collapsed to under one million – a drop of more than 60 percent.
Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcasting pulled Kimmel from their ABC affiliate stations entirely.
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Kimmel threatened to walk away from ABC forever.
Then he came crawling back.
Christian Toto, entertainment journalist and founder of Hollywood in Toto, told Fox News Digital exactly what happened: "Late-night hosts don't care who they alienate in 2026. They've chosen an audience. Period."
They chose half an audience – and got exactly half the viewers.
The Fallon Warning Nobody Listened To
Jimmy Fallon had a chance to be the next Jay Leno – funny, likeable, and apparently uninterested in turning the Tonight Show into a political rally.
Then he tousled Donald Trump's hair during a September 2016 interview and the media mob came for him.
They called it "normalizing" Trump.
They wrote think pieces about the danger of a late-night host treating a presidential candidate like a human being.
Fallon cracked – apologized, said he would have done it differently, and gradually lurched his show toward the same one-sidedness already killing Kimmel's ratings.
"Jimmy Fallon had a chance to be the new Jay Leno, the apolitical yukster who just wanted to make the country laugh," Toto said. "Sadly, after he tousled Donald Trump's hair on 'The Tonight Show' in 2016, he was hounded by the media and the left for humanizing the real estate mogul."
Fallon chose approval from media critics over approval from the actual audience.
The audience noticed.
Colbert Is Cancelled. Kimmel Almost Was. Leno Is Packing Houses.
Leno called Joe Rogan "the new Johnny Carson" this summer – and he's right.
Rogan built an audience of tens of millions of listeners per episode by refusing to be afraid of anyone – conservative, liberal, comedian, fighter, politician.
He didn't ask permission.
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He didn't apologize after.
That's the model Leno and Carson perfected – the one that made the Tonight Show the most powerful platform in American entertainment for 40 years.
Every current late-night host has abandoned it in exchange for Twitter approval from journalists who don't watch their shows anyway.
Kimmel lost more than 60 percent of his audience chasing the approval of people who call conservatives "deplorables."
Fallon lost his nerve trying to prove he wasn't soft on Trump.
Stephen Colbert's show just got cancelled by CBS.
Jay Leno plays Indiana and packs the house.
The audience didn't leave late night because they didn't like jokes.
They left because the jokes stopped being for them.
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Leno Says He Gets 'Beat Up' for Refusing to Go Political But Refuses to Alienate Trump Audiences," Fox News, September 16, 2026.
- Ashley Hume, "Jay Leno Criticizes Modern Late-Night Comedy for Alienating Half the Audience with Partisan Politics," Fox News, July 27, 2025.
- Alex Rosado, "What's Happening to Kimmel's Ratings as He Stays Political," The Daily Signal, October 16, 2025.