Just as the Media Research Center’s resident comedy cop, Alex Christy, raged that Donald Trump’s New York trial was discussed on late-night TV and his guilty verdict got approval there, he’s now upset that Hunter Biden’s trial didn’t get the same treatment. Christy grumbled in a June 12 post:
All five of the late night comedy talk show hosts managed to acknowledge the existence of Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict on their Tuesday shows, but mentioning something is not the same thing as joking about it. Instead, the quintet used the verdict to go after Donald Trump, Republicans, and lament the lack of gun control in America.
On CBS, The Late Show host Stephen Colbert reported on Hunter’s guilty verdict and replied, “Now, that is truly shocking news. Evidently, in America, there is a wrong way to buy a gun. I didn’t know that. I had no idea. I’ve never heard that before.”
Colbert also didn’t see what the big deal was, “Now, it’s no secret how I feel about Trump’s conviction. So, ethically and morally, I have to be consistent and say that, in light of this verdict, I don’t believe Hunter Biden should be president.”
Over at ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the eponymous host declared that “His father did a terrible job of rigging this. He really– Hunter was convicted on three felony gun charges, which means he’s now only 31 felonies away from being the Republican nominee for president.”
After reading President Joe Biden’s statement that read, in part, “Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that,” a sarcastic Kimmel again turned to Trump, “Same thing Trump would say about Eric in this situation, you know?”
All five of the comedy shows had great fun with the sordid details of Trump’s case, but jokes about the similar details of Hunter’s case have been harder to come by. Still, Kimmel noted, “They both filed phony paperwork. Hunter lied on his application to buy a gun. Trump falsified business records. The only difference is one of them was on crack when it happened.”
Over at NBC and Late Night, Seth Meyers used the verdict to mock Trump and Fox News’s Sean Hannity, “Hunter Biden was found guilty today on all counts in his federal gun trial and now faces up to 25 years on Hannity. According to new analysis, first lady Dr. Jill Biden’s round trip flight from France to Delaware to attend Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial could cost taxpayers as much as $345,000. Say what you will about Trump, but he never spent a dime of taxpayer money to be with his kids.”
[…]Over at The Tonight Show on NBC, Jimmy Fallon pulled out his Trump voice, “”I’ve always said our legal system is fair and just. And this is just another example of justice finally being served.”
Fallon also briefly mentioned some of the unflattering details, “What was Hunter guilty of, lying about being on drugs while buying a gun? I mean, when did that become a crime?”
For the men of late night, even scandals that involve Democrats are opportunities to go after Republicans, which is how you arrive at a greater than 4:1 ratio of jokes targeting conservatives.
We’ve documented how Christy’s evaluations of late-night comedy deliberately exclude any evaluation of Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, since he would make those numbers look more balanced and, thus, less click-worthy and less supportive of his preferred narrative. He also made no apparent effort to document any jokes Gutfeld might have told about Hunter — narrative over truth, after all.
Christy is also deliberately ignoring the fact that there’s a difference between a former president committing crimes and the son of a president who has never run for office or worked to be in the public eye, since doing so would undermine his attempts to handwave Trump’s crimes.