What Two Late-Night Shows Learned From Covering Trump

Kristen Bartlett’s entire TV comedy-writing career has revolved around Donald Trump’s presidency. She became a writer on Saturday Night Live in 2016, before joining the staff of the late-night series Full Frontal With Samantha Bee in 2018. And between the two shows, she’s spent four years telling Trump-related jokes, parsing his press conferences, and trying to cover his actions without serving as a mouthpiece for his administration. That’s why, she told me over Zoom late in November, “I feel like I haven’t slept in four years.”

So when, after a long week of ballot counting, the election was finally called for President-elect Joe Biden, Bartlett and her co–head writer on , Mike Drucker, felt relieved, even with the that followed. The outgoing president would no longer be a mandatory comic subject. “He gave a press conference after 6 o’clock the other day,” Bartlett recalled. “We were just like, ‘No. This is after hours. We don’t havenow.’”