Did Donald Trump Cost Jimmy Fallon His Emmy Nomination?

With this morning’s Emmy nominations, the crowded Outstanding Variety Talk Show category squeezed its usual too-many-contenders into six nomination slots, leaving a few out in the cold. Because these shows last for years and years, and most of the major players are nominated every year, the years they’re not nominated feel more pointed. Last year, it was Stephen Colbert’s turn to feel the icy cold shoulder of the television academy. Colbert’s Late Show snub was a sign of extreme doom and gloom for the still-new-on-the-job former Emmy darling. After all, The Colbert Report was nominated for ten straight years before Colbert was snubbed last year. What other conclusions were we to draw but that it might be “time to start counting down to the moment the network replaces Colbert with [James] Corden?” as the Washington Post suggested. Hey, Corden was nominated and Colbert was not! Can’t argue with science.

This year, all is right with Colbert; ratings improved, he’s got that Emmy nomination back, and the harsh glare of the snub spotlight has now fallen on Jimmy Fallon, whose Tonight Show went unnominated today after six consecutive years making the cut. Fallon’s show was also shut out of the writing and directing categories, making his snub harsher than, say, Late Night with Seth Meyers‘ snub, since Seth and his team got a writing nomination. So it was a bad day, for Fallon and for anybody who didn’t want to have to think about Donald Trump today. Because you can’t talk about ill-fortune falling on Jimmy Fallon without talking about Donald Trump.

Ever since that fateful September day when Jimmy Fallon welcomed then-presidential candidate Donald Trump onto his show, only to lob softball questions at him and playfully muss up Trump’s famed sugar-spun mane of spider-web hair, as if welcoming a particularly unruly cocker spaniel back into the family living room, Fallon’s public persona has been anchored to Trump. While it was true that Fallon welcomed Trump before any pussy-grabbing allegations had come to light, Trump was still a demagogue promising deportations and the jailing of his political enemies. Reaction against Fallon was swift and long-lasting. Eight months later, a sympathetic profile in the New York Times was met with harsh reaction and a reminder that no, we’re not ready to let him off the hook just yet.

So is today’s Emmy snub another chapter in the same book? The book where Jimmy Fallon was cruising down the road to long-term late-night dominance before getting derailed by a lightning rod President? The temptation to hang this all on the Hair Muss Heard ‘Round the World is strong. Deadline.com couldn’t resist, whispering that “Some industry insiders suggested that might have been payback for Fallon’s infamous Donald Trump-humanizing hair-muss.” Payback! Like Joey Two-Thumbs and Vinny the Chin took Fallon out back and ripped up his nomination certificate right in front of him!

Part of this is because we talk about late-night television like we talk about Greek myths. The Letterman-Leno battle for Zeus’s throne. The Hugh Grant interview that put Leno into the ratings lead forevermore. Leno’s betrayal of Conan. Fallon the boy king who banished topical comedy in favor of parlor games. Colbert the politically-charged insurgent. It tells a really good story if Fallon — who turned late-night into a marshmallow-soft haven for celebrity silliness, much to the consternation of a generation raised on Letterman’s disdain for those same celebrities — was ultimately ruined by being overly nice to the wrong celebrity.

Viewing this year’s Talk Show nominees through the lens of Trump certainly paints a picture: there’s Colbert, who rails against Trump nightly; there’s Jimmy Kimmel, whose earnest plea for humanity in health-care legislation was taken up by those opposed to Trumpcare; there’s last year’s winner John Oliver and first-time nominee Samantha Bee, who have been sticking it to Trump for the entire run of their shows. It’s an anti-Trump rally at the Emmys this year, y’all! And Colbert’s hosting!

Of course, the narrative that Fallon’s being punished for his political faux pas isn’t a perfect one. How to explain the second-consecutive nomination (and 12th in 13 years — Maher had his own snub year, in 2015) for Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher has been in in similar hot water recently for normalizing a racist demagogue (sound familiar?) and ill-advisedly using the n-word (hey, not even Fallon has tried that one). Of course, if this is all about specifically Trump, then yeah, Bill Maher hates Trump too. But then how to explain James Corden, a political 404 page, getting nominated over Seth Meyers, whose Trump jabs have been as on target as anyone in late night this year?

And then there’s Saturday Night Live, which led the entire Emmys slate this year (tied with Westworld, anyway) for its most politically-charged season in forever. Politicizing the SNL Emmy haul is an interesting needle to thread. Their most recent season was characterized by a consistent pummeling of Trump and his administration, (with the occasional respite where Colin Jost blamed transgender people for losing the election). Alec Baldwin, Melissa McCarthy, and Kate McKinnon all saw nominations for delivering the three most memorable impersonations of the Trump presidency (Trump himself, Sean Spicer, and Kellyanne Conway, respectively). Trump himself repeatedly tweeted his dissatisfaction with the show. Ratings soared.

And yet, if there was any show that did more to normalize Trump to the American public than Fallon’s Tonight Show, it would be Saturday Night Live, which welcomed Trump as a guest host in the fall of 2015. If the idea is that Fallon is being punished for treating Trump like a loveable scamp of a guy, it’s weird that Saturday Night Live is being so hugely rewarded only a year after foisting Trump’s rendition of “Hotline Bling” upon us.

So did Donald Trump really cost Jimmy Fallon his nomination? Did the Trump Moment simply reveal Fallon as being an un-ideal late-night host for today’s highly political moment? Or did the fickle wheel of fortune simply fall upon him this year, as it did Colbert last year and Maher the year before? As with all late-night narratives, sometimes it’s what makes the best story. Right now, Fallon’s story could really use a twist.

Where to stream The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon