Post-Trump's Presidency, The Daily Show Still Has No Shortage of Comedic Targets

Cable news and late-night shows alike were dominated by a singular topic the last four years: then-President Trump. Now that he's no longer in office, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah is finally able to explore topics other than the former president. At the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival and conference, held virtually this year, correspondents from Comedy Central’s late-night show said they welcome the opportunity to figure out comedy in a post-Trump era. “Donald Trump comes in, and he chose the news for us. I look back to getting back to a little bit of a position of deciding what it is we want to actually weigh in on what it is we actually have something to say about,” Jordan Klepper said. “I think that's actually really freeing and exciting for comedians, because there are only so many Donald Trump jokes you can make. It's in the millions, but there's only a finite resource.” Michael Kosta was quick to shut down the misconception that comedy will struggle without Trump as president. “If anything, we have to mine deeper, and harder, and it isn’t all just low-hanging tweets,” he said. But Desi Lydic, who's also part of the popular late-night TV show, believes that it was actually harder to create content under Trump, noting that the correspondents’ job is to satirize the news and politics, and that it was “really hard to parody a parody.” While nobody is quite sure where comedy is headed, Klepper hopes he’ll no longer have to travel with security, as he did during his frequent trips to cover Trump's rallies. “I literally was at an insurrection traveling around with four bodyguards,” he said, referring to the Jan. 6 riots. “So I'm hoping comedy in the era beyond Donald Trump [means] fewer bodyguards.” The correspondents said that while Trump may be out of office, the formula for comedy itself hasn’t changed. “The structure of comedy hasn't changed to the point where things are going to become brand new,” said Dulcé Sloan. “Now we’re just going to be making jokes about another old white man who's the president. We don't have to talk about this man who has taken up so much bandwidth.” Producers and writers are having internal conversations on deciding just how much publicity to give to certain topics. “Even though we're here to tell jokes, and we're here to shine a spotlight on issues, is there a responsibility in talking a lot about QAnon or talking about, should we be giving certain subjects PR?” asked Lydic. “Is there a way to do that in a funny way without necessarily like heightening the movement or the momentum of something like that?” And while there isn’t an answer for that yet, “they're certainly conversations that we're having in this new era now,” said Lydic. 15 more minutes to fill That hasn't been The Daily Show's only big challenge in the past year. Last April, shortly after the show shifted to remote production, Comedy Central expanded the late-night program from 30 minutes to 45, helping fill the void on its schedule caused by the network's earlier cancellation of Lights Out With David Spade. While it could’ve been a struggle to fill 50% more time each night, “it’s not tougher because a lot of those 15 minutes goes to Trevor being able to go deeper into being Trevor and exploring the conversations with the guests,” said Roy Wood Jr. As the pandemic continued on, the turnaround time from edit to conception to air has gotten shorter and shorter for the Daily Show team. “Somewhere around November or December it was, 'yeah, we're gonna shoot this tomorrow.' Now, you might get an email of a script at 10 a.m. that shoots at 1 p.m. [for] the show that [same] night,” said Wood. Wood said moving the show to 45 minutes is “reverting it back to what it was when it was in the studio,” noting the team can be more immediately reactive to news. Previously, “there was a lot of stuff that landed on the cutting room floor,” said Kosta, noting that the team can now extend some of that content, and that viewers stuck at home are looking for more programming to consume. There’s no word yet on when The Daily Show will return to the studio, though the correspondents expect an adjustment period whenever that does occur. “We basically went a year now at this point of no audience, and my fear of the moment we go back with the audience, I'm just going to start talking to Trevor, and the crowd is laughing, [that] I'm just like, 'Shut up, I’m talking,'” said Wood. “That's my biggest fear—how this will alter us as performers.” Comedy Central Expands The Daily Show With Trevor Noah to 45 Minutes