…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him. —Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Watching the last episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was like watching a slow-motion execution—where the victim turns his demise into a rousing revival meeting.
That episode, shown on Thursday, May 21, capped a hugely successful run of 10 years and eight months (September 8, 2015 to May 21, 2026). Broadcast on CBS against ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night ranked as the highest-rated American late-night talk show.
And it held that ranking for nine consecutive seasons, marking the longest such streak in franchise history.
Stephen Colbert
But for all the adoring fans Colbert attracted during those years, he acquired one enemy who never forgot or forgave the slightest insult. And from 2015 onward, Colbert showered him with humorous, deadly accurate insults calculated to get under his paper-thin skin and stay there.
That enemy was Donald J. Trump.
Colbert started throwing thousands of barbs at Trump immediately after the real estate mogul launched his first campaign for President on June 16, 2015. These focused on Trump’s appearance, intelligence, family, policy shifts, criminality, legal troubles and commercial ventures.
Among the barbs:
- “It’s true, this [Iran] war reached all of its objectives. It’s been weeks since anyone mentioned the Epstein files.”
- After Trump threatened to destroy Iran but then agreed to a brief pause, Colbert paraphrased John Lennon’s famous peace anthem, singing: “All we are saying, is peace for two weeks.”
- “For my MAGA viewers. The Trump golden cell phone has FINALLY arrived after a nine month delay. And it SUCKS. The only Trump item more disappointing after a nine-month wait was Eric!”
- Colbert often joked about Trump’s short attention span, comparing his mind to “nature’s most cunning opponent, the goldfish.”
- Following Trump’s 34 felony convictions on May 30, 2024, for falsifying business records, Colbert joked that Trump had “more felonies than Baskin-Robbins has flavors.”
Donald Trump
Colbert had a biting wit that never flinched at speaking truth to—and about—power. But Trump had a weapon that Colbert couldn’t match: Command of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
And in its chair, Brendan Carr, he had a crony willing to destroy any network that dared to offend his thin-skinned boss, Donald Trump.
Knowing Trump’s animosity toward nonwhites, Carr has brutally attacked any network-related company promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). He ordered investigations into Comcast and the Walt Disney Company and threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast license over the practices.
On September 10, 2025, Right-wing propagandist Charlie Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
In September 2025, Carr pressured Disney, which owns ABC, to suspend comedian Jimmy Kimmel over comments he had made about the assassination. On September 17, Disney caved and suspended Kimmel.
Brendan Carr
Kimmel had actually called the murder “senseless.” What enraged Right-wing Americans was Kimmel’s noting that “the MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
This was actually true—and all the more embarrassing to Republicans because of it. The Trump administration and its MAGA cult have tried to portray Tyler Robinson, the man accused of shooting Kirk, as a radical liberal.
He is not.
Debbie Robinson, his grandmother, said most of the family are Republicans—and that Tyler’s father, Matt, is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.
Disney/ABC reinstated The Jimmy Kimmel Show on September 23 after a massive public backlash, a steep drop in Disney’s stock value, and a widespread Hollywood boycott.
Jimmy Kimmel
Paramount had recently paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit he had brought against the CBS news show, 60 Minutes. He claimed that it had misleadingly edited a pre-election interview with then Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances in 2024. CBS’ attorneys and a number of legal experts had said that the lawsuit was “completely without merit.”
On July 14, 2025, after returning from a multi-week break, Colbert said: “While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit.
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company, but just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.
“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 didn’t know it, but the axe was about to fall.
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STEPHEN COLBERT: TRIUMPHANT IN DEFEAT: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 27, 2026 at 12:10 amOn July 14, 2025, after returning from a multi-week break, Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’ Late Night With Stephen Colbert, said: “While I was on vacation, my parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit.
“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.”
Meanwhile, Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS Network, wanted to merge with Skydance Media.
For this, it needed the regulatory permission of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the Trump administration.
On July 17, CBS cancelled the highest-rated late-night show on television with 2.4 million nightly viewers. It had also been nominated for 33 Emmys.
Addressing his in-house and television audience on July 17, Colbert announced: “I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.
“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. This is all just going away.”
In a statement, Paramount/CBS called the cancellation a purely financial decision: “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Colbert did not directly accuse his bosses of bowing to pressure from the FCC. But he did offer this insightful comment: “Less than two years before they called to say it’s over, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.”
What “changed” was that after CBS cancelled one of Trump’s biggest critics, the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media was quickly approved by the FCC.
David Letterman had hosted The Late Show with David Letterman from August 30, 1993, until his retirement on May 20, 2015. In a May 5, 2025 interview with the New York Times, he didn’t mince words about what he felt was behind the cancellation:
Colbert “was dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry?'”
CBS is one of the most profitable broadcast networks in the United States, through massive advertising revenue, affiliate fees, and sports broadcast rights.
Yet the owners of its parent company, Paramount Global—whose revenue stood at $29.2 billion in 2024—felt they could enrich themselves even more by acquiring Skydance Media.
And if siding with a dictatorial administration to strike a blow at freedom of speech was necessary to make the deal go forward, so be it.
The Ed Sullivan Theater, where Stephen Colbert reigned for 11 years
Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Disney didn’t reinstate Jimmy Kimmel Live! out of a steadfast commitment to the First Amendment. It did so only after a massive public backlash led to a widespread boycott of subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu—and a steep drop in Disney’s stock value.
Stephen Colbert had no such reprieve. But he never—at least not in public—lost his poise. He often joked about the upcoming end of his show, endured jokes from his guests about it—and never stopped speaking truth to power at the expense of the Trump administration.
“The only choice you have is how to walk through it,” said his friend and mentor, Jon Stewart, as he and Colbert gazed into a fictitious green wormhole. “You can go in kicking and screaming. Or you can do what you’ve done for the past 30 years when faced with something dark: You stare it down and you can laugh.”
On his last night as host of The Late Show Colbert did exactly that, turning what could have been a mournful event into a celebration of joy and defiance.
Stephen Colbert Signs off “Late Show” with Emotional Goodbye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znec-DIff8o
There had been speculation that Colbert, a devout Catholic, might book Pope Leo XIV for his final show. So Colbert turned it into a gag. He pretended that he was about to bring out the pope for an interview—only to be told the Pontiff was refusing to come out of his dressing room.
“We got him the wrong snacks,” an unidentified voice informed him.
“Who’s going to be my last guest now?” asked Colbert—to be answered by Paul McCartney: “Hey, Stephen, what about me?”
Massive applause resounded as the former Beatle walked onstage.
Stephen Colbert and Paul McCartney
McCartney not only served as Colbert’s last interview guest but as his musical one as well. And McCartney led the band—and the audience—in a rousing number of “Hello, Goodbye,” the Beatles’ 1967 hit:
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Hello hello
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello
Members of the audience—probably including relatives of the show’s cast—swarmed onto the stage to join McCartney, Colbert and the band in what was an act of celebration and defiance: “When faced with something dark, you stare it down and you can laugh.”
Thus Stephen Colbert went gentle—and triumphant—into that good night.
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