"You know who is not one of my guests tonight? That's Texas state representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast."
"Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let's talk about this."
"Let's just call this what it is: Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He's like a toddler with too much screen time."
CBS canceled Stephen Colbert's late-night show and scheduled its final broadcast for May 2026, leaving Colbert on the air for months after the announcement. Lawyers for CBS's parent company, Paramount Skydance, directly told the show that an interview with Democratic Texas state representative James Talarico could violate the Federal Communications Commission's equal-time rule and that the interview could not air. Network lawyers also instructed the program not to mention the canceled interview. Colbert publicly condemned his employer, criticized the FCC and its chairman Brendan Carr, and accused the Trump administration of seeking to silence television critics.
Read at Poynter
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