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Late-night talk show legend Jay Leno admitted Thursday that he will no longer make political jokes to avoid angering viewers.
“I stopped doing anything political in my acting because when I did ‘The Tonight Show,’ the idea was to make fun of both sides equally,” he told Fox Nation’s show. Speaking on “Piers Morgan Uncensored.”
Leno said he thought the joke was a good one because both conservatives and Democrats are angry and he believes he supports the opposition.
“Now you have to take sides, or people get angry. And when I start telling political jokes, they want to know the punchline before they say it. You are either for it or against it,” he added. “So I stopped doing that because I just want people to come and laugh and have a good time. That’s the idea of doing a comedy show.”
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He later admitted that injecting political opinion into his act was “futile.”
Leno told Morgan that while he was “not a fan” of former President Donald Trump, he did not agree with the country’s efforts to remove him from the ballot. Ta.
“I’m against any cause that could work against you,” he said.
Morgan said such a move was “anti-democratic,” and Leno agreed.
Leno said that despite his personal grievances with President Trump, Americans have the right to elect the former president in the next election and did not contest the decision.
“I think we could do a little bit better. You know all these indictments, whatever it is,” he said.
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Leno has previously spoken about the current culture of instability in comedy and his fear of being canceled for not adhering to a certain ideology.
He indicated in September 2021 that he was not stressing about the idea of it being canceled. Rather than haphazardly deciphering sentences or trying to figure out where to get the laughs, Leno said he simply tweaked his approach.
“With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden you can’t do the sexist jokes that everyone used to do. So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt.” Ta.
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FOX News’ Gabriel Hayes and Melissa Roberto contributed to this report.