The Writers Strike Is Over. Will It Hurt Trump?

For political pundits, campaign gurus, and Trump haters of all stripes, it’s a nagging conundrum. Why, even as the felony charges against him keep mounting, do Donald Trump’s poll numbers keep going up? 

There is no shortage of explanations: Trump’s uncanny skill at controlling the narrative, so that each new charge is simply further evidence of the deep state’s vendetta against him: the reluctance of his Republican rivals to dissociate themselves from Trump and his alleged crimes; the sheer blind devotion of his MAGA base.  But let me throw out one more reason why Trump, so far at least, has seemed to escape any political damage from his legal woes: the Hollywood writers’ strike. 

I kid –  but only a little. Now that the strike has been settled, the late-night shows are just days away from returning — and with them the nightly torrent of anti-Trump ridicule that has been missing in action for nearly five months.  

The late-night comedians — talk-show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers, along with cable pundits like Bill Maher and John Oliver — have been a thorn in Trump’s side ever since he first declared his candidacy eight years ago, and their role in holding him to account has, I think, been underestimated.  Investigative reporters, newspaper editorialists, and MSNBC commentators can press the case against Trump with facts, legal arguments, and constitutional precedents. But it’s the late-night comics who have really got to the heart of Trump’s craziness. 

They scour the video clips and social-media posts that even the news shows miss — showcasing Trump’s rambling rhetoric, loony tangents, and narcissistic blather. If it weren’t for Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel, for instance, we might not be up to speed on Trump’s wacky crusade against windmills (“If you want to see a dead bird cemetery, go under a windmill sometime”), or his weird obsession with water-saving toilets that have to be flushed “10 times, 15 times.” (Donald, have you seen your gastroenterologist lately?) Meyers —who has quietly developed the best, most acid Trump impression on TV — has pinpointed the tell that a Trump anecdote is made up: people are always coming up to him with tears in their eyes and calling him “sir.” 

With the late-night talkers on the sidelines (the only show that continued during the strike, tellingly, was Greg Guttfield’s non-union shop on Fox), the comedy arena has been left largely to Trump. More and more, his rallies are sounding like stand-up comedy performances. He greets his criminal indictments with jokes: “Every time I fly over a blue state I get a subpoena.” He mocks the very word “indictment,” encasing it in sarcastic quotation marks (with a Jerry Lewis jump in pitch) as if it’s some exotic neologism. His outlandish exaggerations — “it probably makes me the most innocent man in the history of our country” — are straight out of the stand-up comic’s playbook. 

Meanwhile, instead of comedy counterattacks in late night, we’ve had to settle for reruns— a kind of greatest-hits recap of the ongoing Trump circus. Remember when the FBI seized Mike Lindell’s cellphone at a Hardees? Trump’s “major announcement” that turned out to be a line of digital trading cards? Lev Parnas? 

Since the topical monologues date so quickly, the networks generally don’t rerun episodes that are more than a few weeks old.  But with five nights a week to fill during the strike, they’ve been forced to dig further into the archives. It was something of a shock this week to see Kimmel chortling over a fight between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders during the last Democratic debates — and (pre-pandemic) a man-on-the-street bit about how to protect yourself against the flu. Ancient history. 

How much effect the late-night ridicule actually has on voters, of course, is impossible to gauge. The left-leaning comics of late night are undoubtedly joking mainly to the converted. And ratings for all the late-night shows have dropped substantially since the last time they were shut down by a strike, in 2007-8.  

Still, their bits get circulated widely on YouTube and social media, and the mockery has a way of seeping into the national conversation — as well as Donald Trump’s head. Early in his administration, the notoriously thin-skinned President tried to lean on Disney, ABC’s parent company, to get Kimmel to tone down his jokes. He has called Colbert “a lowlife,” Meyers a “no-talent,” and ridiculed all of them for their falling ratings. 

Not quite as high on the enemies list as “deranged lunatic” Jack Smith, or the “Biden crime family.” But, as Trump likes to say about his indictments, it’s a badge of honor. Good to have them back.