“There was an analysis done of your work on The Tonight Show for the 22 years and that your jokes were roughly equally balanced between going after Republicans and taking aim at Democrats,” Trulio pointed out. “Did you have a strategy?”
To that, Leno admitted, “It was fun to me when I got hate letters — ‘Dear Mr. Leno, you and your Republican friends’ and ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ — over the same joke.”
“And I go, ‘Well, that’s good,'” he said. “That’s how you get a whole audience.”
Today, however, Leno acknowledged that the late-night TV landscape has changed.
“Now you have to be content with half the audience because you have to give your opinion,” he shared.