Heard the one about Trump? How about the other 3,127?
- US president has set new record for most joked about person in past 26 years, according to think tank studying subjects of late night comedy shows
Did you hear the one about President Trump? Or, more precisely, did you hear all 3,128 jokes?
A think tank that has studied the content of late-night comedy for the past 26 years said Donald Trump was the butt of more jokes in 2017 than any other public figure has for a single year. By a lot.
He beat the previous record of 1,816, set by Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016, said the Centre for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University in a study released Friday.
Before that, the record was 1,717 by former President Bill Clinton in 1998, the year of Monica Lewinsky.
“Trump makes Bill Clinton look like a piker when it comes to political humour,” said Robert Lichter, head of the centre. The study looked at opening monologue jokes on shows hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah last year.
There were a total of 6,337 political jokes in the show’s monologues last year, and Trump was the subject of nearly half of them.
