On Monday, CBS’s host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, denounced FCC chairman Brendan Carr for threatening to use the agency’s equal time rule against the late night comedy shows, which he claimed led CBS to force him to put his interview with State Rep. James Talarico on YouTube. With the equal time rule now in the news, NewsBusters analysts dug into the archive to find out when each of the four network late night hosts had a candidate on from each party and found that the last time every one of them had a Republican candidate on was 2016.
NewsBusters has been tracking political guests on the late night shows for about 3.5 years, but not all political guests are candidates. In fact, not all politicians are legally considered candidates. The equal time rule is only in effect 45 days prior to a primary and 60 days prior to a general election. Colbert, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, and NBC’s Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon have interviewed Republicans since 2016, but they were not candidates.
Colbert did have the widest gap of the group. His most recent interview with a Democratic candidate was actually a joint interview on June 23, 2025, ahead of the New York City mayoral primary with Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani. Colbert’s last interview with a Republican candidate was with presidential hopeful Rand Paul on January 6, 2016.
Kimmel was the second worst. His most recent interview with a Democratic candidate was with vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on October 7, 2024, while his most recent GOP candidate interview was with Senator and longtime nemesis Ted Cruz on March 30, 2016, during the Republican presidential primaries.
Meyer’s last Late Night Democratic candidate was Sen. Cory Booker on October 21, 2020, ahead of that year’s general senate election in New Jersey. His most recent GOP candidate was presidential candidate John Kasich on April 14, 2016.
Finally, The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon interviewed Joe Biden on April 1, 2020, during the Democratic presidential primary and Donald Trump on September 15, 2016, in the now infamous hair-touching episode. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton appeared two episodes later on September 19.
Lost in the whole Colbert-Carr kerfuffle was that if Colbert were to grant equal time to all candidates, he would be forced to also interview left-wing darling Rep. Jasmine Crockett because Talarico’s upcoming election is the Democratic Senate primary. That primary is on March 3, which means that if Talarico won, Colbert would have had months to interview him ahead of his May cancelation with no equal time requirement, but the cries of censorship are meant to help cover up the fact that it has literally been over a decade since Colbert last had a Republican candidate on his show.
