Late-night hosts wildly biased toward U.S. war effort against Iran, study finds

'Late Night' host Seth Myers.

In the first week since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, the jokes told by the hosts of network late-night TV shows were overwhelmingly negative toward the U.S., a new study conducted by the Media Research Center found. During that time-frame, the hosts unleashed a combined 250 jokes about the war -- researchers found 235 of the jokes took aim at the U.S., while just 15 made Iran the butt of the jokes.

The study looked at jokes from the late-night shows on the three major networks as well as Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Drilling down to more specific topics within the broader subject of the war, Trump, not surprisingly, was the target of 152 jokes concerning the war with Iran. War Secretary Pete Hegseth was second most-joked-about, being mentioned 23 times and Markwayne Mullin, the U.S. Senator from Oklahoma Trump picked to succeed Kristie Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security was third, the target of 14 jokes by the late-night hosts. 

Many of the so-called jokes were just liberal or Democrat talking points regurgitated in joke form. As the Media Research Center pointed out on X, the material was "anything but funny." Late Night host Seth Meyers told 52 jokes during the first week about the war and all of them were negative toward the U.S. His lead-in, Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show, told 37 jokes during the same period, with 36 of them -- 97% -- being negative toward the U.S., according to the MRC tally. 

The MRC pointed out that the flavor of the material continues a trend by the liberal late-night hosts of reflexively opposing anything President Trump does. And Dave Rubin noted on X how the uniform material essentially amounts to propaganda meant to undermine the Trump administration. 

There were a few jokes made at Iran's expense -- both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert actually took a couple of swipes at the dead ayatollah and the decimated hardliner regime. 

Below, watch a few of the worst clunkers from the late-night hosts. Plus, want to see what a more even-handed approach to a monologue looks like? Check out Dave's most recent installment of "This Week On the Internet."