The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was cancelled, with CBS citing cost despite strong ratings. The cancellation followed an FCC-related approval process involving the Ellison family’s purchase of Viacom-Paramount, alongside other events including a settlement connected to Trump and a hiring decision for CBS News. The piece links these timing details to a signal that Colbert could be sacrificed to appease Trump. It notes that Colbert’s jokes are not the harshest among late-night comedians, comparing his style to Jimmy Kimmel and Saturday Night Live. It describes a recent monologue that used stitched clips to mock Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund negotiation, portraying corruption while not matching the perceived offensiveness of other comedians’ jokes.
"CBS argued that even with the 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 hiring The Free Press ' conservative editor and co-owner Bari Weiss as the 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 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 lat"
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