Jay Leno admits he is retiring political jokes to avoid angering audience: ‘You’ve got to take a side’

Late night talk show legend Jay Leno admitted on Thursday that he would no longer be making political jokes to avoid angering his audience.

“I just stopped doing politics in my act altogether because—you know, when I did ‘The Tonight Show,’ the idea was you make fun of both sides equally,” he said on the Fox Nation show “Piers Morgan Uncensored.”

Leno said he thought the jokes were good because both conservatives and Democrats got angry and believed he was supporting the opposing party.

“Now you’ve gotta take a side and people are angry if you don’t and I find that when I start to tell a political joke, they want to know the punch line before, is this for or against, you know,” he added. “So, I just stopped doing it because I just want people to come and laugh and have a good time. That’s the idea of doing a comedy show.”

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Jay Leno told Piers Morgan he has cut political jokes from comedy act to avoid angering Democrats and Republicans.  (Fox Nation)

He later admitted that injecting his political opinion into his acts is “useless.”

Leno waded further into politics when he told Morgan he was “not a fan” of former President Donald Trump but noted he disagreed with state efforts to remove him from the ballot.

“I’m against the ’cause that could turn against you,” he said.

When Morgan said such a move was “anti-democratic,” Leno agreed.

Despite his personal qualms with Trump, Leno said Americans have the right to choose the former president in the upcoming election and did not chide their decision.

“I think we could do a little bit better. You know all these indictments, whatever it might be,” he said.

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In a recent interview with Piers Morgan, comic legend Jay Leno declared he’s “not a fan” of former President Trump. (1.Alexi J. Rosenfeld / Stringer 2. Rodin Eckenroth / Contributor)

Leno has previously discussed the current volatile culture in comedy and fears of being canceled for not conforming to a specific ideology.

He suggested in September 2021 that he doesn’t stress about the idea of getting canceled. Instead of cracking one-liners carelessly and seeing where laughs land, Leno said he’s simply tweaked his approach.

“With the #MeToo movement, all of a sudden, the sexist jokes everybody used to do, you can’t do anymore. So you either change with the times or you die. You adapt to the circumstances,” he said.

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Fox News’ Gabriel Hays and Melissa Roberto contributed to this report.