Jay Leno stopped by the CBS daytime talk show The Talk on Wednesday to give his perspective on the 2024 presidential election, as someone who spent years of his career covering elections on The Tonight Show. During his appearance, the 74-year-old explained why the landscape has changed in the decade he's been out of the late night game and why the election was actually good for democracy.
When asked by host Natalie Morales what he remembers about his days of having to host a show immediately after a big election, Leno responded candidly: "It was different in my day, you kind of made fun of both sides."
Mimicking the act of writing hate mail, he continued, "'Now you and your Republican' 'Well, you and your Democratic buddies' ... so you'd get angry letters from both sides."
"Now you kinda have to take a side, and yeah, it's a little bit different," Leno explained, before finding a positive in the outcome—even if it wasn't the one he had hoped for. "But the nice thing about this election is, it was fair, it was honest. OK, I was not a fan, but that's OK. It's the President of the United States, let's all get together, thank you very much."
Leno suggested that he was just relieved that we didn't have to relive the rancor of the 2020 election, when it came down to hand-counted votes in swing states, which triggered protests across the country.
"You know, my fear was I'm gonna be watching this and it's, 'There are 1,100 votes out of 300 million between...' and it's going to be name calling," he added. "OK, here's the answer, this is the thing. It was done. There was no cheating. Everybody said it was honest. I mean, it was a great day for democracy."
Time will tell whether his optimism for the country plays out.
