Late-night hosts told more than ten times as many jokes about Donald Trump than any other political figure in 2025—adding up to a whopping 7,045 jokes total throughout the year.
That’s according to a new year-end tally tracking political jokes across six nightly comedy shows from NewsBusters, the website arm of the conservative Media Research Council, which describes its mission as exposing liberal bias in news and entertainment programming.
The organization has tracked political jokes across late-night television since 2023.
This year’s analysis examined political jokes aired between January 6 and December 19 across The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and After Midnight (which aired its final episode in June).
At 7,045 jokes, Trump’s total dwarfed every other target tracked in the study. Elon Musk ranked a distant second with 644 jokes, followed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (371), Pete Hegseth (322), Melania Trump (225), and Joe Biden (220).
Trump was the most frequent joke target on each individual show included in the analysis. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Trump accounted for 1,885 jokes, while Jimmy Kimmel Live! tallied 1,668 Trump jokes, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert logged 1,458, The Daily Show counted 1,128, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon recorded 851, and After Midnight logged 55 during its abbreviated 2025 run.
In total, the study counted 13,097 political jokes across 818 episodes in 2025. Of those, 12,011 were directed at conservative figures or institutions, while 982 targeted liberals and 104 were classified as non-partisan. Trump jokes alone accounted for more than half of all political jokes tallied during the year.
The analysis also tracked how frequently specific people, groups, and organizations were referenced. Across all six shows, 593 unique targets were identified.
While Trump dominated across the board, the breakdown by show varied in scale. Late Night with Seth Meyers logged the highest overall volume of political jokes, reflecting its thrice-weekly “Closer Look” segments. The Tonight Show told fewer political jokes overall, but Trump still accounted for the clear majority of Fallon’s political punchlines.
The study counts jokes by target only and does not evaluate tone, intent, or comedic framing, focusing solely on who or what was the subject of each joke.
Over the three years since it began its joke-tracking project, Newsbusters says late-night shows have told at total of 36,356 political jokes, with roughly 85 percent targeting conservatives. Trump alone accounted for 15,492 of those jokes—nearly half of all political punchlines tracked during that period.
View the org’s complete accounting of political jokes told in 2025 below:
Now post how many lies Donnie has told this year: