Watch the Colbert Interview With James Talarico That CBS Kept Off Air

The interview between Stephen Colbert and Texas state lawmaker James Talarico (D), who is running for senate, aired Monday night, not on cable but on the The Late Show’s YouTube channel after CBS reportedly forced producers to pull the segment.

Colbert opened the show when it aired on television by revealing the situation, in defiance of the network’s demands, and made the case that CBS was acting in response to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr’s warnings about the “equal time” rule.

He informed viewers he was not allowed to say Talarico’s name, show an image of the politician or provide a QR link to the interview that would be uploaded.

The pre-taped interview, when it appeared online after the broadcast show ended, opened with the pair addressing the issue head on, with the host jokingly asking the lawmaker: “Do you mean to cause trouble?”

After laughter from the audience, Talarico responded in kind: “I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas!”

“This is the party that ran against cancel culture and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top,” he continued, rounding on Republicans and the MAGA movement.

He added: “They went after The View because I went on there. They went after Jimmy Kimmel for telling a joke they didn’t like. They went after you for telling the truth about Paramount’s bribe to Donald Trump. Corporate media executives are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians and a threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.”

As the crowd cheered Colbert interjected to mockingly follow: “Just to fact-check you, my network said our cancellation was a purely financial decision.”

Colbert went on to discuss Talarico’s life growing up in Texas and campaign for senate as well as the centrality of his Christian faith to his policy stances, including his past push against having the biblical “10 Commandments” displayed in schools.

Talarico argued that the “religious right” had focused for “50 years” on social issues like “abortion and gay marriage” and said that conservatives had tried to “co-opt Christianity.”

He continued: “I think we need someone in the US Senate who is going to confront Christian nationalism and tell the truth, which is that there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.”

The lawmaker added that the Democratic Party has a “moral imperative to win in November to get the country “back on track” and warned the “culture wars” were a “smokescreen” designed to vilify his party.

“The real fight in this country is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom,” he said.

Watch above via CBS.

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