‘SNL’ Alum Jon Lovitz Calls Out The “One-Sided” Politics Dominating Late Night Talk Shows: “If I Want The News, I’ll Watch The News”

Jon Lovitz is longing for the late night shows of yore.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, the Saturday Night Live alum voiced his opinion on politics making its way into the monologues of late night hosts.

“I don’t like it,” he shared. “They were comedy shows. And now, except for Jimmy Fallon, they’ve all become very political. And for me, it’s too much.”

He noted that Fallon’s Tonight Show predecessor, Johnny Carson, “would do two or three jokes about whoever was president then or what was going on then and that was it,” whereas politics more frequently dominate modern-day late night material.

“I know all those guys,” Lovitz said, name-dropping Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel. “And they’re very nice guys. Very talented.”

He continued, “I think they’re funny, you know. But when they started doing the political stuff, like, so one-sided, it’s like- and that’s all it is, the whole thing, it’s just like, that’s not the shows that I used to go on. You know, it was The Tonight Show and David Letterman.”

While he acknowledged that “it’s their show” and “they can do whatever they want,” he reiterated that it is not his preference.

“If I want the news, I’ll watch the news,” he added. “I’m not watching those shows. They’re late night entertainment, but it’s all political, except for Jimmy Fallon. And they keep getting mad at Jimmy. ‘Why don’t you go into politics?’ Because he’s doing a silly, like, escapism entertainment show.”

Fallon was put under fire in 2016 by online critics after he welcomed Donald Trump on his show for a more lighthearted interview, that ended in him ruffling the former president’s hair. He told The New York Times that he “didn’t do it to humanize him.”

“I almost did it to minimize him,” he continued. “I didn’t think that would be a compliment: ‘He did the thing that we all wanted to do.’”

SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels came to Fallon’s defense, telling The New York Times that the backlash he received for allegedly humanizing the controversial candidate involved “assuming that people can’t make up their own minds.”

“The moment they see someone, they go, ‘Oh, they had him on there, then they must love him,’” he said. “You couldn’t do that show if you only had people you liked.”

Nonetheless, in terms of politics, Lovitz claimed Fallon’s fellow late night hosts “hammer it to death.”

“They’ve become, ‘Here’s my political agenda,'” he said. “They’re very open about it. And I’m like, well, all right. I have no say in that. It’s their show, you know. But I don’t particularly like that they’ve become that because where’s the comedians and the stand-up and the bits, you know, like Letterman. It was comedy.”