Looks like late-night TV is going to miss out on one of its most outspoken liberal guys now. And you know who’s just loving it? President Donald Trump! It wasn’t long before he jumped on his favorite online platform, Truth Social, to give a round of applause for the end of Stephen Colbert‘s show, acting like he’d scored a huge win.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Donald Trump posted, turning his attention to other late-night hosts. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
Colbert, known for coming up with “truthiness” back in 2005, is now caught in a situation that feels a bit like that.
CBS is saying they pulled the plug because of a badly flourishing (if at all) business, like the tough competition at that time of night, and not enough money coming in from ads. They’re insisting it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” But not everyone’s buying it.
Fans and even some political insiders who are usually careful with what they say aren’t convinced.
Was It Really Just Business? Fans Aren’t Convinced
Colbert announced on Thursday that The Late Show will end in May 2026, calling it not just the finale of his own run but the end of the Late Show franchise. “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
And while CBS chalked it up to dollars and cents, the backdrop is undeniably political.
Paramount, CBS’s parent company, recently settled a $20 billion lawsuit from Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, paying out $16 million.
🚨BREAKING: After CBS’s 60 Minutes posted the unedited version of its October interview with Kamala Harris online, President Trump has doubled the value of his lawsuit against them from $10 billion to $20 billion.
CBS is cooked! 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/rRI8qruI1N
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) February 9, 2025
Some say it’s just a strange coincidence, but critics are raising their eyebrows. Even Stephen Colbert couldn’t resist poking fun at it, saying the whole deal stinks like “a big, fat bribe” in one of his latest opening bits.
And CBS is trying to seal the deal with Skydance, a company that David Ellison, who happens to be the son of a well-known Donald Trump supporter, Larry Ellison, is in charge of. Now, for this merger to go through, they’re going to need the thumbs up from the Trump administration. Can you fathom the web this is spinning?
Does Donald Trump’s Comedy Kill List Include Late-Night?
Donald Trump’s victory post comes off as more of a tally than actual commentary.
He’s had beef with late-night TV guys for a while now, pushing for Stephen Colbert to get the boot way back in 2024 and always pointing out what he sees as network bias towards the left.
Now, with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel also on his naughty list, and Jon Stewart’s Daily Show under the same Paramount umbrella, the vibe is clear: go ahead and make jokes, but just don’t go too hard on the fun that makes him look bad. And let’s face it, most of the fun that comes out of American politics, especially since January 2025, does make Trump look bad.
Trump destroys Jimmy Fallon at his Pennsylvania rally for the time when Fallon apologized for “humanizing” him during the 2016 election by messing up his hair on the Tonight Show.
“How WEAK and PATHETIC is a guy like that?” pic.twitter.com/m3Wvl8pCf2
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) September 24, 2024
So, what about Colbert? He could very well be the next big thing like Conan, either on a streaming service or with a podcast everyone’s obsessed with.
After all, you might cancel the show, but the punchline’s going nowhere!
