Trump Celebrates CBS Firing Colbert. That Should Worry Everyone
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday morning to celebrate the surprising news that CBS was canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But there was something else at play: a major broadcast network buckling under political pressure from the Commander in Chief.
CBS announced Thursday that its flagship late-night program, the most-watched show in its time slot for years, is coming to an end. Colbert’s deal had nearly a year left, and by all accounts, the show still held top ratings among traditional late-night formats. So why the sudden end? Why now?
In his Thursday morning post, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. 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.
It’s typically Trumpian bravado. But it also reveals something deeper: the former president is on the offensive, weaponizing media narratives and media companies’ vulnerabilities in ways we haven’t seen since the 2016 campaign. And he appears to be winning.
The timing of CBS’s move is as conspicuous as it is confusing — unless you look at it through the lens of a parent company that desperately needs something from the man most personally skewered by Stephen Colbert over the last decade.
While news of Colbert’s exit has been packaged with euphemism — the CBS statement called it “a financial decision” — the move is startling on its face. Colbert has consistently been among the top-rated late-night hosts, and while the entire format is declining in the streaming age, he has remained CBS’s best bet for relevant, next-day viral content.
His departure was announced just days after Colbert used a monologue to blast Paramount, CBS’s parent company, for its controversial $16 million payout to Trump to settle a laughable lawsuit over a 60 Minutes segment edit — a deal that smelled more like hush money than damages.
In that segment, Colbert directly called out his own corporate overlords for what he saw as a shameful cave-in.
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended,” Colbert said. “And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
And then, almost immediately, the network announced the curtain call for his show. Coincidence? Maybe. But the timing — and optics — are revealing if not atrocious.
Paramount Global is in the midst of a high-stakes acquisition attempt by David Ellison’s Skydance Media — but for the sale to go through, it needs regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission. That is to say: Paramount/CBS needs Trump’s blessing.
And how best to get on Trump’s good side? Cut off the man who’s consistently mocked, needled, and ridiculed the president nightly since he pivoted to a more partisan point of view during the first Trump administration. Whether this was the express reason for the decision or just the unspoken logic of nervous executives reading the political tea leaves, the result is the same: a major media institution seemingly bending to the political pressure of an increasingly emboldened Trump.
There’s a pattern emerging — one that should trouble anyone who believes in the independence of the press, or in the wall that’s supposed to separate political power from editorial judgment.
It’s easy to dismiss late-night comedy as fluff, but Colbert — like Jon Stewart and David Letterman before him — served as a cathartic critique of power delivered in a format palatable to millions. So Colbert’s removal is not just about entertainment programming. It’s about the shrinking safe zones where criticism of Trump can still exist in mainstream media.
That’s what makes Trump’s social media post more notable than most. It wasn’t directly about Colbert, but it was about dominance — about controlling the narrative, flipping the Epstein story back on his enemies, and testing just how pliant the media remains in his presence. It’s not hard to imagine Trump watching CBS blink and taking it as a sign: they’re already backing down.
The right loves to claim that the media is biased against conservatives. But in moments like these, the bigger story isn’t liberal media bias — it’s institutional fear. It’s the slow, quiet recalibration of coverage and tone, not because Trump is demanding it, but because powerful executives know they’ll need something from him soon.
If Colbert’s sudden cancellation is any indication, the media’s independent spine is already showing signs of stress — and the next four months will only increase the pressure.
Because the message is loud and clear: Trump is watching. And CBS just blinked.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
