The liberal late-night hosts put their post-election meltdowns on full display Wednesday evening less than 24 hours after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon greeted their shows with similar rehearsed acts — putting on a fake smile and lamenting about the terrible night they had because of Trump’s win.
“I spent a lot of time over the past 17 hours thinking about what I would say tonight, or even if there is anything to say tonight, and there’s nothing, goodnight everybody,” Kimmel said walking off the stage.
“Those of you who are hate watching this show right now wanting to watch me suffer, you will be happy to know that there was no joy in Mudville last night,” he said.
Kimmel became emotional later on when he claimed it was a rough night for several different groups.
“Let’s be honest, it was a terrible night last night,” he said.
“It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hardworking immigrants who make this country go,” Kimmel said, pausing to fight back tears. “It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him, and guess what, it was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too, you just don’t realize it yet,” he added.
Kimmel baselessly claimed that Trump’s victory was a good night for Russian President Vladimir Putin, polio, Silicon Valley billionaires and the “wriggling brain worms who sold their souls to bow down to Donald Trump.”
“I’ve been trying to come up with something positive, the best I can come up with is we’ve been through this once before and yes this time it’s probably gonna be worse, maybe a lot worse,” Kimmel said.
“I’m disappointed, I know a lot of you are too. I thought commonsense would prevail. I’m so stupid, I always think it’s gonna but for a lot of people this just isn’t important. It’s not high on their list.”
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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
CBS host Colbert’s opening on the “Late Show” began with a more somber approach as he spoke directly into the camera in front of a silent audience.
“Hey there, how are you doing?” Colbert began his show. “If you watch this show regularly I’m guessing you’re not doing great. Yeah, me neither.”
The “Late Show” host retold an encounter where someone apologized to him for having to do a show the day after the election, but Colbert brushed it off saying he “gets to do a show today.”
Colbert focused on telling people to not be alone during “times like this” and that he was glad to be doing a “comedy show.”
“No one gets into this business because everything in their life worked out great,” the 60-year-old said. “So we’re built for rough roads.”
Colbert transitioned into the “cold open” displaying several different broadcasts from election night coverage before mocking the different reactions of Trump’s victory from around the world.
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Fallon, however, relied heavily on cheap one-liners and seemingly forced laughs from the crowd during his opening of “The Tonight Show,” on NBC.
“Well guys last night America decided to get back with a crazy ex and elect Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States,” Fallon said. “No matter who you voted for I think we can all agree that it’s going to be a rough Thanksgiving.”
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TV Ratings: Election Night Viewing Drops Sharply
Fox News led all networks in primetime, but audiences were smaller across the board compared to 2020
CNN suffered the steepest percentage decline from 2020, with its TV audience dropping by 46 percent
Primetime coverage of the presidential election averaged 42.29 million viewers across 18 cable and broadcast networks from 7-11 p.m. ET, according to final same-day ratings from Nielsen. That’s a steep, 26 percent decline from four years ago, which drew 56.92 million viewers, and the least watched election night since the ratings service began keeping total viewer tallies in 2000.
Nielsen also says 22.6 percent of TV households (28.45 million) watched election coverage Tuesday, the lowest percentage ever dating to 1960. Donald Trump was elected to his second term, with most news outlets calling the race early Wednesday morning.
The great majority of Tuesday night’s TV audience — about 38.45 million people — was tuned in to the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and three biggest cable news channels (CNN, Fox News and NBC). Mirroring the overall decline, all them brought in smaller primetime audiences than they did in 2020.
Fox News led the 8-11 p.m. ET block with 10.32 million viewers watching coverage anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. MSNBC (6.01 million) finished second, narrowly beating ABC’s 5.9 million. NBC averaged 5.51 million viewers, followed by CNN (5.1 million), CBS (3.61 million) and the Fox broadcast network (2 million from 8-10 p.m. ET).
The remaining audience was spread across The CW, Merit Street Media, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNNe, Fox Business, Newsmax, NewsNation and PBS.
CNN suffered the steepest percentage decline from 2020, with its TV audience dropping by 46 percent (from 9.41 million). CNN notes, however that its streaming service CNN Max recorded its best day ever, and other digital outlets were on par with the last presidential election. Fox News is down by about 27 percent, and MSNBC fell off by 21 percent — but finished ahead of CNN on a presidential election night for the first time and also had record online traffic. ABC and NBC had more modest declines (6 percent and 5 percent, respectively, while CBS fell by 20 percent and the Fox broadcast network slipped by a third.
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