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Why Losing Colbert Hurts So Much

Trump would have all his comedian critics fired if he could. But Colbert represents a particular loss.

Stephen Colbert on the set of The Late Show on CBS on the last night of the show.

Last night, Stephen Colbert of CBS’s The Late Show joined a growing list of critics of President Trump who lost their jobs this week. Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky lost his primary for defying Trump on the release of the Epstein files. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his primary for voting to impeach President Trump in 2021. And Stephen Colbert lost his show for the far worse crime, the unforgivable crime, in Trump’s eyes, of laughing at him.

Of the three, I’ll miss one of them. Eleven months ago, as the Ellison family sought final approval from Trump’s FCC to buy Viacom-Paramount, which then owned CBS, it was announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was to be canceled on May 21, 2026. CBS argued that even with high ratings, Colbert’s show was too expensive to make money for the network. Still, the timing of the announcement, alongside the FCC meeting, the $16 million 60 Minutes settlement paid to Trump, and David Ellison’s hiring The Free Press’s conservative editor and co-owner Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News, sent a strong signal that the Ellisons offered Colbert up to appease Trump.

Of the late-night comedians, whether on weekdays or on Saturday Night Live, Colbert is hardly President Trump’s harshest critic. His jokes are not harder, meaner, or more piercing than Jimmy Kimmel’s or those on SNL’s Weekend Update. This week, Colbert’s monologue included a dissection of the absurd “negotiation” between Trump and his own IRS for the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. The Late Show did it with a series of clips from seemingly dozens of Trump interviews stitched together to create a “negotiation” to give himself that amount. It illustrated the brazen corruption of the fund in a clear and funny way, but it can’t be said to have had the viciousness of a South Park scene showing Trump nude. It can’t be said to have infuriated the Trumps, like Kimmel’s recent joke about how lately Melania Trump has “the glow of an expectant widow.”

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