Donald Trump is not a fan of late-night television.
The president has criticized Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher, and even Jimmy Fallon. Other than Greg Gutfeld on Fox News, his disdain for the current crop of late-night hosts is inexhaustible. It has recently led him to call on ABC to take Kimmel off the air, and even threaten to sue the network.
Trump has said he wishes that legendary late night host Johnny Carson was back from the dead to host The Tonight Show. “Where’s Johnny Carson? Bring back Johnny,” he said while campaigning in 2024. A few years earlier, Trump called modern late-night hosts “weak” compared to Carson, who “did a great job” and “wasn’t political.”
The president might want to rethink his wish that Carson was still on the air. The late-night legend relentlessly made fun of Trump when he was an attention-hungry real estate developer in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. For example:
Johnny as his famous Carnac the Magnificent using mystic powers first gave the answer, “Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, and Donald Trump’s mouth.”
The host then ripped open the envelope and read, “Name three things in New York that may run forever.”
Another Carson quip: “A black hole is a collapsed neutron star of such intense gravity that even Donald Trump’s ego could not escape.”
On Trump’s bankruptcies: “Donald Trump was supposed to be with us tonight, but he called from the Motel 6 and said he missed his bus,” and “The other day I saw Donald Trump on the street with a sign that said, ‘Will Sell the Plaza Hotel for Food’.”
On Trump as a bully: “Have you seen the latest game out from Milton Bradley called Trump? Yeah, from Donald Trump. You roll the dice and you land on a spot, and it says ‘Evict an Elderly Couple, Collect $1 million in Property Taxes’. It comes with dice, a board, and a little plastic set of homeless people.”
Carson once read a mock memo written by Trump to children’s TV host Mister Rogers: “It’s my neighborhood now. Take your crummy sweater and get out.”
Some have argued that Carson was not political. Not true. There’s little chance he would have let up on Trump if he were in the White House.
As someone who has interviewed over 400 people about Carson for my book, Love Johnny Carson, I can attest that he could be brutal to politicians. He hammered everyone, upsetting numerous presidents and their families with his barbed jokes.
Nancy Reagan phoned Carson to complain about his jokes about Ronnie. Gerald Ford blamed Carson’s jokes for the perception that he was a “stumbler.” During then-Senator Joe Biden’s plagiarism scandal in 1987, Carson skewed him for months, and Biden ultimately dropped out of the 1988 presidential race.
Nobody in authority, neither Republican nor Democrat, was spared.
Yet, Carson had a heart. When at the height of Watergate he learned that Nixon was abusing alcohol, he stopped attacking the president. He also wasn’t afraid to make his political views clear on the air.
Carson expressed outrage — and said so on his show — when in 1978 a 19-year-old college freshman was sentenced to 12 years for selling a third of an ounce of marijuana. Carson called the punishment “unbelievable” and “wrong.”
In his monologues, he made clear his distain for singer turned anti-gay activist Anita Bryant for months. In 1977, in Dade County, Florida, Bryant fought to remove an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. One newspaper’s headline read, “Carson Is Turning Anita Bryant into a National Laughingstock.”
Carson hosted the 1972 Emmy Awards when The Johnny Mann Singers performed an overly patriotic song as the Vietnam War raged on. Following the musical number, Carson sarcastically quipped, “War bonds are on sale in the lobby,” to thunderous applause. Carson’s line was met with outrage by conservatives.
Carson’s boldest political move came in 1968, when he invited singer and actor Harry Belafonte, a well-known civil rights activist, to host The Tonight Show for an entire week. “Invite whatever guests you want,” said Johnny. Belafonte booked guests who were outspoken about civil rights and against the Vietnam War. The list that terrified NBC included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
Simply put: Carson was a rebel and a radical.
“Jimmy Kimmel is no Johnny Carson,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said last September amid a pressure campaign that led ABC to pull Kimmel off the air for a week — but Carr has no idea how Johnny would have gone after Trump.
“I think he’d be offended and angered by Trump,” Carson writer Michael Barrie told a journalist. “Johnny was the epitome of decorum and good manners and midwestern reticence — and Trump is the antithesis of that.”
I can only imagine how Carson’s comic genius would rip apart a man who has provided more fodder for late-night comedians than nearly any public figure in American history
