Democrats: Public ‘deserves to know’ if Colbert was canceled for political reasons
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) blasted CBS for announcing it will cancel comedian and host Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” pressing for more transparency on the decision.
The move comes shortly after Colbert publicly took CBS’s parent company Paramount Global to task for settling a $16 million lawsuit with President Trump.
“CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery,” Warren wrote Thursday on social platform X. “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”
Schiff, who was a guest on Colbert’s show Thursday — when the news broke — echoed his colleague’s concerns in his own X post.
“If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” he wrote.
Warren posted a clip from Colbert’s monologue Monday in which he blisteringly mocked Paramount Global over its payout to Trump in a dispute over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. Paramount is seeking approval from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its merger deal with entertainment giant Skydance, Colbert noted.
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles: it’s big fat bribe,” Colbert quipped.
CBS announced the surprising move Thursday evening with a statement calling it “purely a financial decision.”
“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said in a statement. “Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”
Colbert has helmed “The Late Show” since 2015, when he took the reins from veteran host David Letterman. The program is the most-watched talk show during the 11:35 p.m. timeslot, averaging nearly 2.5 million viewers during the second quarter of this year.
The comedian also has been one of Trump’s fiercest late-night TV critics and frequently features Democratic guests who oppose the president, including Warren and Schiff. The looming merger and Trump-Paramount settlement had raised some speculation about Colbert’s future in the shake-up.
“CBS should terminate his contract and pick almost anyone, right off the street, who would do better, and for FAR LESS MONEY,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last year.
Colbert said during Thursday’s episode that he learned the news a day earlier.
“It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced,” he said. “This is all just going away.”