Trump-friendly actor Vince Vaughn blamed late-night hosts’ political agendas for the supposed downfall of their shows.
“People want authenticity, and I think that the talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based,” Vaughn, 55, said on MAGA comedian Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast on Tuesday. “They were going to evangelical people to what they thought. And people just rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic; it felt like they had an agenda.”
Speaking with Von, who had President Donald Trump as a guest leading up to the 2024 election, the Wedding Crashers star ripped late-night hosts who targeted his friend in the Oval Office.
“It stopped being funny, and it started feeling like I was f---ing in a class I didn’t want to take,” Vaughn said.
The actor hasn’t appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show in more than a decade, and has never appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show—two of Trump’s most vocal critics in the late-night sphere.
Vaughn, a self-proclaimed Libertarian, has also been a frequent pal to Trump, 79. Last April, Vaughn visited Trump at the White House, an event commemorated by an official Instagram post that parodied his 2005 film as The White House Crashers. The actor was not on Trump’s scheduled guest list and didn’t share details of their meeting.
Vaughn has also been seen shaking hands and speaking with the President at a college football game.
“The phenomenon isn’t what they say,” he continued. “They always blame technology, but the reality is that it’s the approach.”
The Old School star said that he’d much prefer watching a live show than “stay home and watch it on a TV,” because it feels “dangerous.”
“And I want it pure,” Von, 46, added.
“That’s the main point,” the actor confirmed. “People are going to tune into a podcast more so because they want to feel like people are having a real conversation.”
“But if you look at what happened to the talk shows and why their ratings are low, it’s got only to do with the fact of what you just said, which is they all became the same show,” Vaughn continued. “And they all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad.”
Colbert, 61, and Kimmel, 58, have both faced sharp repercussions for frequently targeting the president in their monologues. Kimmel was briefly suspended by ABC in September after threats from the Trump-appointed FCC chairman, and CBS announced the end of Colbert’s show just days after settling a $16 million lawsuit with the president.
“Imagine sitting next to someone like that on a f---ing plane,” Vaughn joked. “Bro, you’d be like, ‘How do I get out of this f---ing seat?’”
“I’d fart right next to them,” Von joked.
“Holy cow. You’d fart your way out of it,” Vaughn concluded, laughing. “You’d skunk them.”
Though Vaughn never publicly endorsed Trump, his overt chumminess with the president earned him widespread backlash from his fans. Vaughn said the reactions were overblown.
“I think people are more charged than ever about these things,” he told the Los Angeles Times following his football game conversation with Trump in 2020. The actor blamed the outcry on a “small percentage that’s making noise.”
