Following Trump’s election victory, humor was quickly seen by disoriented liberals as both a balm and a weapon.

Even before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, he had been providing America’s late-night TV show hosts with ample fodder for comedy.

These late-night TV shows are the spearhead of political satire for liberal America, and many take their orientation from The Daily Show, which began in 1996. With John Stewart as host after 1999, it developed a mixture of political and news satire that became a popular genre.

Following Trump’s election victory, humor was quickly seen by disoriented liberals as both a balm and a weapon. The veteran TV host David Letterman claimed that “comedy’s one of the ways that we can protect ourselves” from Trump. Late-night comedy became the bellwether of this trend and the intensified focus on political satire proved a rating hit for many of the hosts.