Seth Meyers admits shock over second Trump victory prompted sit-down with late-night team to adjust tone
Late-night host Seth Meyers admitted to shifting his tone after President Donald Trump was elected a second time during an interview on Tuesday and held a meeting about it with his team.
Nayeema Raza, host of the "Smart Girl Dumb Questions" podcast, asked Meyers if political comedy makes people feel too comfortable. Meyers said it was a concern but that he didn't know how else to approach it. He also said he didn't want to sound the alarm about the Trump administration every night on his show.
"We did have this like tonal conversation at our show, because again, we did not, I mean, twice now, we have been shocked that he has been elected, right? First time more than second, but the second time we sat down with everybody," he said.
"I'm like, 'Look, I don't think we can tonally be the same that we were for the first four years, right? I think it's going to be different, and it's going to feel different, and it will also — it will feel like, I don't know, just a little like neutered if we're like going through the motions again,'" Meyers continued.
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"And so what we do and like what I go out and tell the audience before the show every night is like, 'Look, this show is joyful to do. This is joyful to have you here. And like there's a real strength and joy.' Like, so what we're talking about isn't joyous, but like we — I don't want to perform with like the weight of it all on top of me," he said.
"I want to be like honest about it," Meyers added. "We want to get our facts right. But we think there's a strength in, like, sort of being joyful about the fact that we're all together agreeing how f---ing crazy this is."
The late-night host also addressed Jimmy Kimmel's suspension during the interview. Kimmel, host of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was suspended in 2025 after comments he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
"With that said, like if, like, they turn the lights off fast, when they turn it off, right? Like when Kimmel went off the air, like I don't think he knew that morning that he would be off the air that night. And that was certainly the scariest time of all of this," he said.
"The scariest thing about the second term is, like, I feel like there's a lot more going back to the drawing board when you don't get it your first try," Meyers said.
Meyers credited NBC News for never telling him what he should "say," and called it a "special thing."
"These elitist hosts have spent a lifetime scaring audiences with every move from this administration, so they can insist they're going to lean into joy, but they cannot and will not help themselves," Curtis Houck, managing editor of Newsbusters, told Fox News Digital.
"They have this belief that they're like Thomas Paine writing about how 'These are the times that try men's souls,' and any sort of happiness must be seen as a triumph. Cry me a river. Late-night hosts like Meyers have gained increased prominence on the left because of their rabid emphasis on everything Trump and a hyperbolic outlook," he added.
Meyers, along with fellow late-night comedian John Oliver, recently joined Kimmel on his show, where the pair described Kimmel as a "bulletproof vest" when it came to Trump.
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Oliver said that Kimmel comes up a lot during the question-and-answer sessions at stand-up shows he performs with Meyers.
"Because they’ll normally say, like, how does it feel being, you know, disliked by the current president? And we always say as long as you’re on the air, we’re fine," Oliver said.
"You draw all the ire," Meyers said.
"We are fully supportive," Oliver told Kimmel. "We are fully behind you the way that we’re fully behind a bulletproof vest."
The group went on to speculate about why Kimmel drew the most attention from the president, and Meyers said, "Other than the fact that you don't like him, we think he would want to hang out with you."