Donald Trump’s win motivated Stephen Colbert to take a political slant that he avoided earlier in his tenure as Late Show host, and viewers responded.
Colbert was probably helped by the fact that some viewers were alienated by how Fallon handled his interview with Donald Trump, but the reality was that Colbert finally seemed in his element as host.
He began to really pick up steam starting in the week of Trump’s inauguration, and he kept rising until he was finally beating Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on a regular basis.
Everything changed around the time of the 2016 presidential election.