Politics

A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.

News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.

Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.