Colbert's 'Late Show' jokes overwhelmingly targeted conservative Republicans, analysis finds

"Over the span of the final 458 Late Show episodes on CBS since January of 2023, NewsBusters logged 8,553 political jokes. Of these, Colbert told 7,480 (87 percent) about conservatives, 934 (11 percent) about liberals, and 139 (2 percent) about nonpartisan people or organizations," according to the analysis

By Nicholas Ballasy

Published: May 24, 2026 7:22pm

Former CBS "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert overwhelmingly joked about conservative Republicans most often, according to an analysis by NewsBusters.org.

"Over the span of the final 458 Late Show episodes on CBS since January of 2023, NewsBusters logged 8,553 political jokes. Of these, Colbert told 7,480 (87 percent) about conservatives, 934 (11 percent) about liberals, and 139 (2 percent) about nonpartisan people or organizations," read a NewsBusters report about Colbert, who hosted his final episode of the long-running show this week.

"Colbert’s top ten most joked about people included only one Democrat. The top ten were Donald Trump (3,640), Joe Biden (339), George Santos (269), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a Republican (208), Republicans (180), JD Vance (151), Pete Hegseth (146), Elon Musk (143), Kristi Noem (106), and Rudy Giuliani (104)," the report also read.