By dumping The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, CBS bows to Donald Trump  | Opinion

Late-night talk shows have been a cornerstone of American television. Whether you still watch them on TV or YouTube, or clips on TikTok, late-night comics have offered hilarious, withering, and historical commentary on American society and politics since the 1950s.

That’s why it was such a shock on Thursday when CBS announced that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will end next year.

“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” CBS executives said in the statement.

There is no way it is a purely financial decision since Colbert had better ratings than Jimmy Fallon on NBC and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC.

CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is currently seeking approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media. A company that cites financial concerns for removing their flagship show amid their parent company’s multibillion-dollar merger is telling the most fibbest of fibs.

California Sen. Adam Schiff appeared on the show the same night Colbert announced its end.

“If Paramount and CBS ended The Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” Schiff wrote on X.

Sadly, we already know why. This decision and many like it come down to one angry orange man.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday morning. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

Colbert, the decade-long host of “The Late Show,” has been a constant critic of Trump, proven correct on multiple occasions. But CBS and Paramount are worried only about the one time he would be wrong.

Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement after being sued by Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with his former Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris.

The truth is that the company, on the brink of a multibillion-dollar merger, doesn’t want another pesky lawsuit to soil its plans. So to keep that from happening, it is eliminating a modern television mainstay.

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A soulless TV landscape

“The Late Show” has been an institution since 1993, when David Letterman started the show after leaving NBC. To cancel the show because CBS, the network that was once defined by fearless journalism and commentary, is scared of Trump marks a terrible moment in our democracy. The network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite is more worried about keeping one man happy than anything else.

Colbert’s criticisms of Trump were not idiotic or foolish. They were clever, insightful and deliberate. He went een further than most talk-show hosts by having politicians as guests. Colbert bridged the gap between commentary and humor and it made him dangerous to Trump.

Further, this decision by CBS now gives Trump even more power in the media. He now gets to set the rules.

Fear is a known value in Trump‘s leadership, and across the country, in every system, we’re seeing how people react to it. For large media companies like Paramount, their fear drove them to part with a mainstay of their company.

Colbert’s ultimate service to the American people has been creating a space that people could find at the end of a hard day, to not only make sense of the craziness but to experience in a communal setting.

This is a dangerous step that could lead to a TV landscape with no soul and no courage.

American TV has always been a ratings-hungry machine fueled by greed. Now it is bending a knee to an authoritarian president by silencing a critic whose jokes upset the supreme leader.

This story was originally published July 18, 2025 at 11:50 AM.