Of all the late-night shows and their respective hosts, Jimmy Fallon has gotten the most heat for seemingly offering his tacit approval of Donald Trump’s presidency, famously ruffling the former Apprentice star’s hair when he stopped by The Tonight Show last September. But when asked by Sunday TODAY’s Willie Geist in an upcoming interview, set to air this weekend, if the former SNL player ever feels pressure to take on Trump like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert do night after night, Fallon offers three reasons why his show, compared to others, isn’t one to take swipes at POTUS.
First of all, Fallon isn’t really a political comedian to begin with. “It’s just not what I do. I think it’d be weird for me to start doing it now,” he muses. “I don’t really even care that much about politics. I gotta be honest. I love pop culture more than I love politics. I’m just not that brain.” Second of all, Colbert, Kimmel, and the rest of late night have already kind of, sort of, cornered the market on Trump jokes. “I think the other guys are doing it very well. Colbert’s doing great. That’s what he’s good at. He’s great. He’s always into political comedy,” Fallon, whose ratings have continued to dip throughout the fall, explains. “When it’s organic, I’ll dip into it as well. But I’ve always made jokes about the president.” Finally, given this year’s nonstop flood of natural and man-made catastrophes, it’s not been easy to milk jokes from disaster, especially a joke Jimmy Fallon can deliver with conviction on The Tonight Show. “A lot of stuff is hard to even make a joke about,” he observes. “It’s just too serious.”
