Over his long tenure as host of The Tonight Show, Jay Leno found plenty of material from US elections, cracking nightly jokes about candidates from both sides of the aisle.
While he’s retired from the late night gig now, Leno offered some surprising and measured thoughts about the recent 2024 presidential race.
In a recent interview on The Talk, Leno, 74, expressed relief that the presidential election went smoothly — even though the victor, Donald Trump, was not his preferred candidate.
“It was fair. It was honest,” Leno said. “Okay, I was not a fan, but that’s okay. It’s president of the United States. Let’s all get together. Thank you very much, you know? You know, my fear was I’m gonna be watching, and it’s, ‘There are 1,100 votes out of 300 million between —’ and it’s going to be name calling.”
Many feared this election would be chaotic, similar to the 2020 election. Though Joe Biden won that last race with 306 electoral votes, slim swing state margins and an influx of mail-in ballots meant it took days to officially determine the winner. Trump, then the incumbent, pushed false claims of voter fraud and attempted to overturn the results, culminating in the January 6 attack at the Capitol.
But Trump won decisively this time, the race was called on election night and Kamal Harris has conceded the race. Though many have concerns about another Trump term, the US at least avoided what might’ve been a tumultuous and violent post-election period. There were also no reports of any unfair influence by foreign powers, such as Russia or Iran, as had been feared.
“Here’s the answer,” Leno said. “It was done. There was no cheating. Everybody said it was honest. It was a great day for democracy.”
Though Leno has often kept his political views closer to his chest than other late night hosts, he previously said he is “not a fan” of the president elect.
“If the people want that person as president, that’s fine,” he told Piers Morgan earlier this year when asked about Trump. “I mean, I’m not a fan, and it has nothing to do with politics. I just don’t think morally — I think we could do a little bit better. You know all these indictments, whatever it might be,” also citing January 6 as a reason for his dislike. In the same interview, he called Joe Biden a “good guy” and said the “economy’s doing pretty good.”
But don’t expect Leno to talk about his political views during his acts. “I just stopped doing politics in my act altogether,” he told Piers Morgan. “Now, you’ve gotta take a side and people are angry if you don’t.”
“It was different in my day — you kind of made fun of both sides,” he said on The Talk, saying he now gets “angry letters from both sides” for cracking jokes at politicians.
The presidential election has inspired some intense emotions on both sides of the political aisle, but Jay Leno seems to have a even-handed perspective, even if he’s not a fan of Trump.
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