It was a week of ridiculing Republicans for the men of late night comedy. From Monday to Thursday, the comedians attacked Republicans as racist, cult-like drones and told more jokes about VP-nominee JD Vance in one week than they have about current VP Kamala Harris all year.
For the purposes of this study, analysts examined 19 episodes of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! guest host Anthony Anderson throughout all four nights of the RNC.
Analysts looked at how many jokes were told about Donald Trump, JD Vance, and everything else connected to the convention. What type of jokes were told and who the hosts brought on as guests to help them make sense of the proceedings were also analyzed.
Who Was Joked About
Throughout the week, there were 67 jokes told about Trump, 28 about Vance, and 162 about everything else related to the RNC, for a total of 257. Stephen Colbert led all hosts with 33 jokes about Trump and 57 about the rest of the convention. The Daily Show led all shows with eight Vance jokes.
The 28 jokes about Vance should be judged against the 20 told throughout the whole year about current Vice President Kamala Harris. Additionally, Vance had 12 jokes told about him prior to his selection, while Harris had 19 at the start of the week.
Jokes about Trump were down relative to the rest of the year. However, that can be explained by the hosts having several speakers a night to make fun of and the fact that only two of them (Colbert and The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper) were live on Thursday after Trump’s acceptance speech.
What Was Joked About
It was not unexpected that during the week of the RNC, comedians would joke about Republicans. However, to identify themes, jokes were divided into ten categories: policy, character, personality, physical appearance, age, names, gaffes and bloopers, nonsensical statements, impressions, and polls. For a detailed definition of each, check the methodology section below.
According to the comedians, physical appearance (62), character (55), and personality (31) were the top three ways they attacked Republicans. Rep. Matt Gaetz’s face gave the hosts plenty of material to work with on their Thursday shows, but the main theme that was consistent throughout the whole week was that Republicans are not good people where top trends included attacking the GOP as racist or disproportionately white or being too servile to Trump.
Guests
Throughout the week, liberal guests outnumbered conservatives guests four-to-one and no currently elected Republican was welcomed to discuss their own convention. The guests were as follows:
COLBERT: Adam Kinzinger, Elizabeth Warren, Charlamagne Tha God, Bernie Sanders
DAILY SHOW: Bill O’Reilly
Guests were categorized based on the contents of their statements, meaning Kinzinger sounding like a Democrat makes him a Democrat despite his time in Congress as a Republican.
Conclusion
Throughout the week, the comedians loved to attack Republicans personally while staying away from jokes about age and polling. When the DNC arrives next month, expect the inverse to be true because President Biden's age and bad poll numbers give the comedians an excuse not to joke about liberalism or any moral failing Democrats may have.
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JOKE METHODOLOGY:
- Policy: Ideas, stereotypes, or the party platform.
- Character: Moral failings, real or perceived, including scandals and showing excessive amounts loyalty to the nominee.
- Personality: Individual quirks, tendencies, hobbies, or other non-political traits.
- Physical Appearance: Includes things such as clothes, bad hair days, and unflattering photos.
- Age: How old someone is, including whether they’re too inexperienced.
- Names: Puns or other creative uses for proper nouns.
- Gaffes/Bloopers: Any flub, technical difficulty, or physical embarrassment.
- Nonsensical Statements: A statement that is not a mistake, but nevertheless deemed to be confusing or weird.
- Impressions: Voice imitations or the mimicking of signature mannerisms
- Polls: Popularity
