The Media Research Center’s glee over CBS canceling Stephen Colbert in the wake of its Paramount parent’s bribe-y settlement of a lawsuit from Donald Trump continued with a July 19 post by Alex Christy complaining that the obvious link was pointed out:
CNN’s Jake Tapper tried desperately on The Lead on Friday to connect the news that CBS has cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with parent company Paramount’s legal drama with President Trump. Tapper admitted he had no evidence for this but still found the whole thing to be “interesting” and promoted anonymous sources to help him advance his conspiracy theory.
During his monologue, Tapper recalled an interview Colbert gave with PBS where he called Trump “boring,” which led to Trump calling for Colbert to be fired. After a clip, Tapper observed, “And here we are ten months later, Colbert has been canceled, and PBS is losing its federal funding. Interesting.”
Not really, but because Trump reacted gleefully to the news, Tapper continued, “And in case you wondered how the president took the news about Colbert, he posted on Truth Social, quote, ‘I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.’ He’s still not satisfied, though. ‘I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.’ That’s what President Trump said.”
Trump’s comments aside, Colbert was not fired. His contract is expiring, and CBS decided re-upping a show that loses $40 million a year wasn’t worth it.
Christy continued to grouse that Tapper refused to unquestioningly accept CBS’ explanation for the cancellation the way he does:
He then admitted he had no evidence for any of this but still accused Paramount of letting Trump think he had something to do with it, “Now, we may never know if CBS ending the Colbert Show was part of some secret deal cut between Paramount and Trump, or if it was just a freebie Paramount threw in, or if it was entirely unrelated and actually because of financial reasons, but Paramount is happy to let Trump think it is in the name of pleasing him.”
That’s just not true. CBS’s statement explicitly said the decision had nothing to do with Colbert’s liberalism or other business involving Paramount.
Christy didn’t explain why CBS’ word on Colbert must be trusted so implicitly.
Intern Matthew Seck similiarly ranted — and similarly baselessly trusted CBS’ word — in a July 21 post:
On Friday night’s The 11th Hour, MSNBC host Symone Sanders ran a segment discussing the recent announcement of CBS’s move to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, ending David Letterman’s legacy. Despite indicators pointing towards financial implications, panelists, including co-creator of The Daily Show and abortion activist Liz Winstead, decided it was purely political and President Trump’s fault.
[…]Despite a 40 percent decrease in advertising revenue since 2018 and the fact that it had been reportedly operating at a $40 million loss per year, MSNBC still chose to strictly cite politics as the reason for the cancellation. CBS also reported the cancelling of six other shows in 2025, a far cry from the narrative that Colbert was being singled out.
Seck then touted the right-wing competition: “Despite Winstead calling Fox’s late night show Gutfeld a ‘gang of garbage’ they continue to top the ratings among all late night shows and outpaced Winstead’s Daily Show viewership by 2.295 million.”
Christy returned to huff in a July 22 post:
The men of late night reacted to the news that CBS has cancelled The Late Show with varying degrees of intelligence on their Monday shows. On the dumb end of the spectrum was fellow Paramount employee Jon Stewart, who reacted on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show by telling CBS to “go fuck” itself and dropping over 40 F-bombs.
Stewart saw a conspiracy in CBS’s announcement, “If you’re trying to figure out why Stephen’s show is ending, I don’t think the answer can be found in some smoking gun email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives, or in CBS’s QuickBooks spreadsheets on the financial health of late night. I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment. Institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our pubic hair-doodling commander-in-chief.”
[…]Colbert himself was more reserved, “CBS, who I want to reiterate have always been great partners, put out a statement saying very nice things about me and about the show, and thank you to them for that.”
He did have one dud, “How could it be a purely financial decision if The Late Show is number one in the ratings?… somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak, saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between 40 million and $50 million a year. Forty million’s a big number. I could see us losing $24 million. But where would Paramount have possibly spent the other 16 mill — oh, yeah.”
[…]Colbert wasn’t wrong that late night has suffered as network TV in general declines, but this means that people who desire less liberal comedy have several additional options. Stewart and Meyers would be well-advised to learn that lesson, or they could be next.
Christy seems to be contradicting himself here — after first slavishly buying into CBS’ explanation that politics had nothing to do with Colbert’s cancellation, he’s now suggesting that it did.
Nicholas Fondacaro brought it up in his July 22 hate-watch of “The View”:
The firing of “comedian” Stephen Colbert by CBS had the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View in a tizzy, as they finally got around to discussing it on Tuesday. Of course, co-host Sunny Hostin poured on the incendiary rhetoric, suggesting that his firing (with a 10-month ramp) “is the dismantling of our Constitution.” She also seemed to hint at political violence as a possible answer.
Despite admitting that the reason Colbert was fired and the show canceled “could be financial,” Hostin wanted people to heavily lean toward it being “purely political.”
“Because it’s very clear that if it is political, this is the dismantling of our democracy. This is the dismantling of our Constitution,” she declared. “That means the very rubric of our democracy is being dismantled. And I think every single person should be really, really concerned about it.”
[…]In contrast, co-host Sara Haines actually put weight to the numbers that supported that the firing and cancelation was due to financial failures of the show, pointing out that Colbert had lost $40 million:
Fondacaro did not cite any actual numbers to back that up. Curtis Houck served up his own whining:
Despite having already spent nearly 12 minutes (11:38) on Friday morning decrying the stunning news of CBS cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026, CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today returned to do more pouting Tuesday about this show as one of many (far-left) late-night comedy as part of both media “institutions” and the “cultural Zeitgeist” as evidenced by Monday’s “star-filled show of unity.”
This time, they added eight minutes and five seconds to the pile (excluding teases and their third-hour editions) with CBS featuring not one, but two segments bemoaning this as though Colbert himself, not the show, had passed away. Thankfully, as we’ll see, co-host Tony Dokoupil provided a much-needed reality check.
[…]Dokoupil gave a succinct counter to this, emphasizing both the largesse of the show and the previously ignored fact that late-night comedy shows are no longer unifying:
[…]Dokoupil added more welcome perspective. Conceding “it’s all I hear about from people on social media” and that “many things are true in this case,” he called out those who cut the cord:
Houck didn’t mention that he has previously, and dubiously, dismissed Dokoupil as a “socialist” because he once did a segment on income inequality, or why his assessment of Dokoupil has suddenly changed because of an apparent embrace of right-wing talking points.