Announcing the shock cancellation of The Late Show on July 17, 2025, Stephen Colbert was characteristically humble and gracious. He thanked CBS, the network that had just handed him his pink slip, and called the network “great partners.” That despite the drubbing he’d given the current management’s choice to settle a bogus lawsuit by Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes interview, which Colbert referred to on air as “a big fat bribe.” The move was widely viewed as smoothing the way for parent company Paramount’s pending merger with Trump-favoring Skydance Media. Depending on your view of the situation, the same political calculations were behind Colbert getting the heave-ho.
Yet even as he’s approached the end of his late-night run, Colbert has remained consistent with the sentiments he expressed last summer. With the deeply suspect decision to cancel Colbert’s Late Show after 11 years—thus ending a brand David Letterman inaugurated 33 years ago—there’s plenty of anger to go around. Not that Colbert is using his last episodes to vent about it. At least not personally.
And that’s Colbert’s style, as respectful and humane in personal interactions as he is unsparingly funny when skewering obvious bullshit, political or otherwise. In spite of his decades of experience channeling what he’s termed the “poorly-informed, high-status idiot” brand of right-wing punditry through his roles on both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the actual Stephen Colbert steadfastly projects an aura of humanity that made his “Stephen Colbert” character work. The bigotry, sexism, and sycophancy of that persona teased out as flaws in character and understanding rather than proof of unknowable evil.
Even in his more straightforwardly topical Late Show monologues, with their occasional, targeted forays into crudity and bluntness at the expense of Trump and others seemingly dedicated to causing as much harm as possible, the host’s underlying (if occasionally grudging) empathy came through as an appeal to common decency. Sure, calling Trump a “prick-tator” and tossing out a judiciously pixelated middle finger from time to time might constitute a low blow. But Colbert’s consistency in calling out what he sees as anathema to the country he unabashedly loves puts sneaky purpose behind the expected monologue zingers.
That multi-layered approach can be seen in Colbert’s final few weeks of shows, where he’s largely left the broadsides against CBS, Paramount, and Skydance to his hand-selected dream guests. Amid all the farewell smooches (Pedro Pascal, Jimmy Fallon, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus got their goodbye kiss), on-air cocktails, and cheeky gifts (Tom Hanks’ stolen CBS stationery, Jon Stewart’s matching easy-rise vibrating recliners), Colbert has largely sat by and watched his guests throw the haymakers. Louis-Dreyfus, in character as Veep’s Selina Meyer (her parting gift to superfan Colbert), sneered at Colbert for leaving, noting all he has to do is “hold on until the corporate jizz-guzzler who fired you gets fired.” Stewart mocked CBS’ “very smart decision” to fire his former Daily Show colleague, likening the network’s many self-sabotaging right-wing moves to a flailing sports franchise “tanking for a draft pick.” In a Late Show reunion of the hosts who pulled together as “Strike Force Five” during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, fellow Trump target Jimmy Kimmel was unsurprisingly forthright in channeling viewers’ “outrage,” calling for a boycott of Paramount+. While potential future Paramount employee John Oliver feigned discomfort, he was also more succinct than Kimmel, simply terming the situation, “some fresh bullshit.” Encapsulating this earnest, let-the-guests-do-the-talking spirit, Bruce Springsteen lobbed a few insults at the president, Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison, and Ellison’s father/media-consolidating piggy bank Larry before launching into the unsubtle, topical rebuke of “Streets Of Minneapolis.”
Naturally, the most give-no-damns guest in these past weeks has been Letterman himself. While his own voluntary exit from Late Show wasn’t especially acrimonious, Colbert’s predecessor drew on his residual bitterness over losing The Tonight Show to Jay Leno by ripping CBS’ decision to vacate the Ed Sullivan Theater after Colbert’s final Late Show. “I have every right to be pissed off,” he stated from beneath his magisterial beard.
And, amplifying his interview assessment that the powers that be are “lying weasels” for denying politics was behind Colbert’s ouster, Letterman thanked Colbert for “everything [he’s] done for our country” before signing off with a poisoned echo of CBS News’ former glory days: “Good night and good luck, motherfuckers.” That Colbert and Letterman had just spent a cathartic five minutes hurling CBS studio property off the Ed Sullivan’s roof provided ample punctuation.
And while there’s plenty of implied resentment amidst the fun and frivolity of Colbert’s valedictory lap (it’s hard not to see the symbolism in Colbert gleefully dancing to guest David Byrne’s “Burning Down The House” while raging infernos are projected behind them), fans are no doubt hungering for a little rhetorical fire on the way out the door. There’s no question that Stephen Colbert has plenty to be pissed about. Which leaves Late Night viewers wondering just when the host will let loose on his soon-to-be former corporate overlords. In their sit-down, Colbert only smiled when Kimmel mused aloud that he was waiting for “angry Stephen” to come out.
There was a flash of ire when he informed viewers that CBS has given the show a mere seven days to clear out of the theater it’s called home for so long, noting on the Strike Force Five podcast that “We’ve gotta get our shit out of here,” and explaining, “I know my staff is not paid the next day,” with barely concealed disgust that some 200 crew members will lose their jobs. Colbert, like Letterman, is genuinely heartbroken that the Ed Sullivan Theater—reopened by Letterman, restored to former majesty by Colbert—will sit idle for the foreseeable future. And his position as the last steward of The Late Show has seen Colbert lament, “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.” From another show business figure, Colbert’s wish that “somebody else was getting it,” might feel phony. But from Colbert, the sentiment rings with history, and loss.
Colbert himself has remained cagey concerning his belief in the political motivations behind the cancellation. “If people have theories that associate me with that,” he said diplomatically in a GQ interview, “it’s a reasonable thing to think.” “But my side of the street is clean,” he added, “and I have no interest in picking up a broom or adding to refuse on the other side of the street.”
The Late Show is being forced into obsolescence, with Paramount’s sketchy claims of changing TV markets and supposed losses openly mocked by pretty much every Colbert guest in these final shows. (The show has topped the late-night ratings for nine straight seasons before being canceled.) That the venerable time slot of a show hosted by two unimpeachable comic legends is being rented out to lifelong stand-up mediocrity turned improbable entertainment mogul Byron Allen to present sanitized, inexpensively packaged interviews with other comedians is not just a travesty. It’s a tragicomedy, and a telling one.
So while the lead-up to the final, top secret Late Show sign-off has led to much speculation as to which path Stephen Colbert will take, it’s not impossible to guess. If the peril that American democracy finds itself in as it limps toward its 250th anniversary has been the primary, necessarily escalating focus of Colbert’s political humor in 11 years of Donald Trump’s influence, so has been his implied parallel faith that Americans will, eventually, and against all prior example, come to their senses. To believe otherwise would be giving into the cynicism Conan O’Brien warned against in his final Tonight Show (a send-off that’s been on my mind, and the mind of other critics, lately), and that Colbert spent the majority of his Late Show pushing against.
It’s tempting to say that in Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert’s generosity of comic spirit met its match. In every measurable way, Trump’s narcissism, proud moral bankruptcy, and deeply un-funny repugnance battles Colbert’s compassion and talent to a seeming standstill. But if Colbert’s time behind The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Late Show desks has proven anything, it’s that fighting an unprincipled jackass doesn’t have to make you one.
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