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stephen colbert
Colbert Blasts CBS for Cowering to Trump, Refusing to Air Interview With Texas Democrat James Talarico
"Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV," said Stephen Colbert, host of "The Late Show."
Feb 17, 2026
"Late Show" host Stephen Colbert unloaded on higher-ups at CBS late Monday for refusing to air his interview with Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico, allegedly out of fear that the Federal Communications Commission—led by Trump lackey Brendan Carr—would retaliate against the network.
"We were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast," Colbert said of the Democratic candidate, whose 15-minute interview was aired on YouTube instead.
During an on-air segment late Monday, Colbert called attention to FCC Media Bureau guidance issued last month stating that daytime and late-night talk shows featuring interviews with political candidates must give equal time to opposing candidates, effectively dispensing with a decades-old exemption for the programs.
Colbert slammed CBS for "unilaterally enforcing" the FCC guidance, a decision he said was made for "purely financial reasons." CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance, whose chief executive, David Ellison, is the son of billionaire Trump ally and donor Larry Ellison.
Watch Colbert's segment:
CBS leadership's decision to block the airing of Colbert's interview with Talarico came days after the Republican-led FCC launched an investigation into whether ABC's "The View" violated equal time rules with its Talarico interview earlier this month. US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who is running against Talarico in the Senate primary, appeared on "The View" in January.
Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, denounced the ABC investigation as a "sham."
“Let’s be clear on what this is. This is government intimidation, not a legitimate investigation," said Gomez. "Like many other so-called ‘investigations’ before it, the FCC will announce an investigation but never carry one out, reach a conclusion, or take any meaningful action."
"The real purpose is to weaponize the FCC’s regulatory authority to intimidate perceived critics of this administration and chill protected speech. That is not how a free society operates," she continued. "I urge broadcasters and their parent networks to stand strong against these unfounded attacks and continue exercising their constitutional rights without fear or favor."
By refusing to let the Talarico interview air on the televised broadcast, CBS opted to cave to the administration, according to Colbert.
"Let’s just call this what it is: Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time," said Colbert. "He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper."
Talarico, for his part, declared in a social media post that "this is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see," posting a clip of his appearance on "The Late Show."
Watch the full interview:
"I think that Donald Trump is worried that we're about to flip Texas," Talarico said during the interview. "This is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they're trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read."
"They went after 'The View' because I went on there," he continued. "They went after Jimmy Kimmel for telling a joke they didn't like. They went after you for telling the truth about Paramount's bribe to Donald Trump. Corporate media executives are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians."
Other critics of the CBS decision said it's the latest example of media conglomerates bending to Trump's bullying.
"Big media self-censorship is real," warned Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications with the advocacy group Free Press.
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'Merry Christmas!' Declares Trump Moments After Threat to Destroy Broadcasters Who Air Criticism of Him
Trump's latest threat came shortly after he once against lashed out at late-night host Stephen Colbert.
Dec 24, 2025
President Donald Trump sent out a cheery Christmas greeting early Wednesday morning just three minutes after threatening to shut down US broadcasters if their programs did not provide him with more positive coverage.
In a Truth Social post sent out at 12:36 am, Trump renewed his threat to once again strip broadcast licenses from networks that cover or portray him and his administration in a negative light.
"If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated?" Trump wrote. "I say, YES!"
Just three minutes afterward, at 12:39 am, Trump posted an all-caps message that read, "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!"
It is unclear what sparked Trump's latest threat, although shortly before it was posted he lashed out at comedian Stephen Colbert, whose time hosting CBS' "The Late Show" is set to end in May 2026.
"Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success," he wrote. "Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings. Stephen is running on hatred and fumes. A dead man walking! CBS should, 'put him to sleep,' NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!"
While Trump frequently delivered angry rants about media coverage throughout his first term, his words appear to be carrying significantly more weight during his second term.
For example, the announcement of Colbert's cancellation raised eyebrows earlier this year because it came shortly before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signed off on an $8 billion deal for CBS parent company Paramount to be bought by Skydance Media, the company founded by David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison.
Weeks after this, Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to rescind broadcast licenses for Disney-owned ABC unless it took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, off the air. Hours after Carr's threat, Kimmel's show was suspended before being put back on the air days later amid a public outcry.
Over the weekend, CBS News boss Bari Weiss spiked a segment on the network's flagship news program "60 Minutes" that cast a critical eye on the Trump administration for sending hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious El Salvadoran prison where they were allegedly subjected to abuse and torture.
Weiss' decision to at least temporarily quash the story came as Larry Ellison is making a hostile bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery that will once again need FCC approval in the future in order to succeed.
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Trump's Media Takeover Isn't About Bias, It's About Silencing Dissent
The Trump administration is weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
Aug 02, 2025
It's remarkable how much happens that barely makes the news. While we scroll through memes and sensationalized soundbites, our attention monetized by oligarchs who profit from our stupor, democracy dies in broad daylight.
Many of us fastidiously tracking political events may have missed a chilling detail buried in the Paramount/CBS merger: a "bias monitor." The Trump administration installed this Orwellian position alongside the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion at CBS and Paramount. According to Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole dissenting vote against the merger, this represents "just another part of this administration's campaign of censorship and control."
Commissioner Gomez explained the gravity of this so-called monitor: "What they're saying is that they are going to self-censor basically for ideological purity according to what this administration likes and to report only in the way this administration likes. Apparently, bias is anything this administration doesn't like. And that is what they're promising not to show anymore to their consumers."
This is not a threat. It is a promise being delivered.
When Satire Dies, Democracy Dies
Stephen Colbert's cancellation marks that promise in action. The highest-rated late-night host, Emmy-nominated, and like other effective comedians, someone who has pointed out the absurdities of our political system for decades. As Inae Oh of Mother Jones reported, "one could argue that [until now] Trump's attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I'm talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action." The cancellation of Colbert changes this. We are witnessing the first successful assault on the cultural sphere itself.
They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
What does it mean to have a president who uses his enormous platform to pathetically attack performers and entertainers? Just in the last week of July, U.S. President Donald Trump personally attacked Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah, Bono, Taylor Swift, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Joy Behar. These attacks aren't just the desperate posturing of a has-been reality TV star president, they threaten to become official government-led investigations.
Of course, there's no credible evidence for any of his claims. But that hasn't prevented the capitulation of systems that could fight back. Recently, Brown, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Los Angeles, Paramount, Disney, and Meta all paid multimillion dollar settlements ($221 million in the case of Columbia) to the Trump administration to avoid litigation. This litigation could have helped establish some balance of power in this country. Because of these capitulations, they are now all complicit in the dismantling of our democracy.
This Is Not About Bias
Let me be clear as a psychologist: This is not about bias. Bias is a tendency, often unconscious, that leads to preferences or disfavor of people, ideas, or beliefs, often in ways that are unfair. Real biases manifest as stereotypes, prejudices, and systematic preferences that shape how we perceive and interact with the world.
If we genuinely wanted a bias monitor at any corporation, it would require enormous funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. Actual bias monitoring would examine unconscious prejudices, systemic discrimination, and unfair treatment of marginalized groups. This is the opposite of what the Trump administration has been doing as all the policies being enacted reinforce white supremacy.
What we have instead is the Trump administration weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
This isn't about bias, it's about following the predictable playbook of authoritarians. This suppression of critical voices mirrors what happens in North Korea, where the government exerts near-total control over media and entertainment, allowing only content that glorifies the ruling family while strictly banning dissent or satire. There are no North Korean Stephen Colberts. Critical art is suppressed, and those attempting to create or access it face harsh punishment, including forced labor or execution.
The Revolutionary Power of Art
While this moment is dire, I believe in the revolutionary power of art. History shows us that authoritarian regimes fear artists above all else because art reveals truth in ways that propaganda cannot counter.
To all who continue to create—comedians, performers, writers, artists—don't stop. Keep faith in the transformative power of art because, in Toni Morrison's words, "Art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be."
As we navigate this slide away from democracy, we need artists to continue creating more than ever. Every joke that punctures pomposity, every song that speaks truth to power, every story that humanizes the dehumanized is an act of resistance.
The Trump administration understands something we must remember: Culture shapes consciousness. They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
As usual, Trump doesn't get humanity and doesn't understand that art has always thrived under oppression. The most powerful voices often emerge from the margins, from the underground, from those who refuse to be silenced.
This "bias monitor" isn't monitoring bias, it's monitoring our humanity. And that's exactly why we must not let them win.
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'Capitulation Index' Tracks How US Media Companies Are Responding to Trump Bullying
"This capitulation is... a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms," said Free Press.
Jul 30, 2025
Media advocacy organization Free Press on Tuesday unveiled an index that documents and rates major media organizations' reactions to the coercive demands being made by U.S. President Donald Trump.
As Free Press explained in a press release, its Media Capitulation Index tracks actions being taken by 35 major media conglomerates who are facing pressure from Trump and his allies to curb critical reporting and commentary on his administration.
"In this investigation, Free Press found that to varying degrees the owners of America's largest media firms are caving to pressure from an authoritarian-minded president and his captured federal agencies," the organization wrote. "This capitulation is not unique to owners of news outlets—like Paramount (which owns CBS), Disney (ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN). Rather, it's a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms."
Free Press argued that media companies have been bending to Trump's will through four major methods: Paying out lavish settlements in lawsuits brought by the president; rolling back their programs for enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion; pressuring journalists and commentators to soften or even censor their criticisms of the president; and "attempting to curry favor with the president during inaugural ceremonies, private dinners at Mar-a-Lago, and meetings in the White House."
The index uses a scale to rate media organizations that range from "independent" on one end to "propaganda" on the other. Of all the media companies surveyed by Free Press, only two are rated as independent: Bloomberg Media Group and Netflix. The New York Times Company for now is the least compromised of any print media conglomerate outside of Bloomberg and is merely listed as "vulnerable," while Nant Capital, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, is the most compromised and is rated as "obeying" the Trump administration.
When it comes to broadcast media, no companies earned an "independent" ranking, and CBS owner Paramount was ranked as "obeying" the Trump administration in the wake of its decisions to give Trump a $16 million payout and then cancel the show of longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.
Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, a longtime critic of the American media's response to Trump, praised Free Press on her Substack page for highlighting the major problems facing the American media in the second Trump term.
"Huge, diverse corporations own news companies, and independent journalism all too often takes a back seat to corporate profits, mergers, and other forms of consolidation," she said. "Meanwhile, public media has been defunded, local journalism lacks local ownership, and partisan propaganda has found an influential home on radio and cable news."
She also interviewed Tim Karr, who works as Free Press' senior director of strategy and communications, about why her former employer did not earn an "independent" rating on the index.
"There is a tendency to 'both-sides' reporting about the Trump administration,” Karr said of The New York Times' coverage, which he added seems to give "equal weight to the forces of democracy and the forces of authoritarianism."
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Media and University Bosses Are Silencing Their Employees for Fear of Trump’s Wrath
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use the federal government to punish media corporations.
Jul 26, 2025
The latest casualty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.
On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In it, he criticized Trump’s attempt to dismantle the global trading system.
Porter didn’t stop there. He also explained why he was leaving the Post:
Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties… I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr. Bezos’ fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than the Post.
Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris. He made a huge contribution to Trump’s inauguration. And he stood directly in front of Trump at Trump’s swearing in.
Why? Because Bezos owns a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump’s goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.
It’s much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS’ “The Late Show” and the top-rated late-night talk show host in the United States.
On July 14, Colbert openly criticized CBS’ parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump of his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.
Said Colbert in his opening monologue:
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… 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. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.
Three days later, on July 17, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert’s show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”
(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to “go fuck yourself,” and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)
Yesterday, one week after Colbert’s show was cancelled, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s sale to Skydance.
To cinch the deal, Skydance CEO David Ellison promised that he’d eliminate all U.S.-based Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias in news coverage.
Trump says CBS also agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements consistent with his ideological beliefs.
Let’s be clear. Jeff Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of The Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump’s wrath.
CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, has silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert’s hugely popular “Late Show” because its top corporate brass fears Trump’s wrath.
The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump’s wrath.
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations that allow its writers or hosts to criticize him.
It’s the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump’s lies (such as that climate change is a “hoax”).
Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and a handful of others have gone out of their way to “cooperate” with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump’s wrath.
What does “cooperation” entail? Silencing Trump’s potential critics.
Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.
Friends, this is how democracy dies.
Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.
Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.
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Paramount Chose Trump’s Favor Over Press Freedom
The latest moves from CBS’ owners mark the latest seismic shift to the right in the U.S. media landscape.
Jul 25, 2025
The media production company Skydance is acquiring Paramount Global. The deal may be thought largely to be an entertainment merger, as Paramount owns Comedy Central, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, Showtime, and the Paramount film studio. But Paramount owns broadcast network CBS and its news programming, which means that the deal has enormous implications for journalism—particularly given that it requires federal approval.
The coast certainly seems clear for the merger at this point [Editor’s Note: It was approved on Thursday]: Paramount has settled what is widely regarded as a frivolous lawsuit from U.S. President Donald Trump for $16 million over a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris; it has also canceled its highly successful and long-running “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” whose host was critical of the settlement. Meanwhile, Paramount‘s soon-to-be-owner has met with “anti-woke” crusader Bari Weiss about a potential partnership with CBS.
U.S. President Donald Trump has used his institutional power to attack media he dislikes such as ABC and CBS, as well as to defund liberal-leaning public broadcasters NPR and PBS (FAIR.org, 4/25/25; Variety, 7/18/25; USA Today, 7/18/25). Late last year, Disney settled a similarly ludicrous Trump lawsuit over ABC‘s election coverage (FAIR.org, 12/16/24).
Trump has also used his power to take control of government broadcaster Voice of America, once a Cold War propaganda tool for U.S. power projection abroad, and fill it with content from One America News Network (AP, 5/7/25), a pro-Trump outlet FAIR founder Jeff Cohen once said “makes Fox News sound like Democracy Now!” (FAIR.org, 10/15/21).
The latest moves from CBS‘ owners mark the latest seismic shift to the right in the U.S. media landscape.
Paramount Kisses the Ring
The lawsuit that Paramount settled to pave the way for the deal preposterously claimed that an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the CBS show “60 Minutes” was deceptively edited to favor her over Trump (BBC, 7/2/25). Anyone who cares about journalism or media freedom would have rooted for Paramount and CBS to fight the lawsuit, but Paramount‘s leading stockholder, Shari Redstone, apparently saw the settlement as a small price to keep Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from standing in the way of the lucrative sale. (Trump claims that the combined company has also agreed to air $16 million more in PSAs, described as messages that will “support conservative causes supported by President Trump,” as part of the settlement, though Paramount denies such a side agreement exists—Variety, 7/4/25).
The settlement has been “broadly criticized as capitulation” by CBS staffers (Vanity Fair, 7/2/25). Reuters (7/2/25) reported that one “60 Minutes” source said:
Newsroom staff expressed “widespread distress” about the settlement and concerns about the future of the CBS News prime time news magazine and its hard-hitting brand of journalism.
A filing with the FCC (Deadline, 7/18/25) suggested that an upcoming shift in CBS’ news coverage was part of the deal to get the acquisition approved. It said that Skydance and FCC officials had “discussed Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’ editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.”
Presumably those “varied ideological perspectives” will not include those offensive to Trump, since airing those resulted in Paramount paying a multi-million-dollar settlement. As I previously wrote (FAIR.org, 2/26/25), FCC chair Brendan Carr is a lieutenant in the MAGA movement, and wrote the FCC section for Project 2025, the right-wing policy roadmap for the second Trump administration. While vowing to reduce regulation, he has shown no qualms about using state power to impose ideological limits on broadcast news.
Paramount also promised to install an ombud who would investigate “any complaints of bias or other concerns” at CBS News, and to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (Wrap, 7/23/25).
‘Sacrificing Free Speech to Curry Favor’
As the deal approached, it became clear that CBS’ ability to operate as a fair news provider was slipping, as Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” “announced his resignation, saying he can no longer make independent journalism decisions for the program” (NPR, 4/23/25). With Colbert’s termination, it’s unclear whether any part of the new Skydance empire will escape ideological purification.
CBS‘ announcement that it would cancel the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has been read as a muzzling of a prominent critic, not just of Trump, but of the Paramount settlement. The Writers Guild of America East (7/18/25) spelled out the authoritarian moment plainly:
On July 15, during a regular show of the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Colbert went on-air and called the settlement a “big fat bribe” in exchange for a favorable decision on the proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance, a charge currently under investigation in California.
Less than 48 hours later, on July 17, Paramount canceled the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” a show currently performing first in its timeslot, giving vague references to the program’s “financial performance” as the only explanation. For 10 years, the show has been one of the most successful, beloved, and profitable programs on CBS, entertaining an audience of millions on late night television, on streaming services, and across social media.
Given Paramount’s recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that the “Late Show’s” cancellation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval.
In its first new episode in over a year, the Comedy Central flagship animated comedy “South Park” (7/23/25), often embraced by conservatives for its eagerness to offend liberals, attacked both Trump and the channel’s owner Paramount. In its raunchy style, USA Today (7/24/25) reported, it “referenced everything from the company’s controversial settlement with the president to its shock decision to cancel the ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert.’” Show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had previously commented on X (7/2/25), “This merger is a shitshow, and it’s fucking up ‘South Park.’” It remains to be seen whether the thin-skinned Trump White House will hold up the acquisition in retaliation for the satire. [Editor’s Note: It did not.]
Trump’s ‘Favorite Tech Company’
There are indications that more ideological restructuring at the network is on its way. CNN (7/11/25) reported that “Paramount’s owner-in-waiting, David Ellison, met with journalist entrepreneur Bari Weiss… about a possible tie-up between CBS News and her startup The Free Press.” The report added that “Ellison is said to be interested in infusing Weiss’ editorial perspective into CBS News.”
For those who are unfamiliar with Weiss, she is a former New York Times editor and writer who gained fame for attacking “wokeness” (Commentary, 11/21)—which for the right is any politics that seeks to address racial and gender inequalities—and her advocacy for Israel and against critics of its government (Intercept, 3/8/18).
While David Ellison donated to former President Joe Biden’s reelection efforts (CNBC, 4/16/24) and other Democratic campaigns, the political commitments of his father Larry Ellison may be more relevant. Larry is the cofounder of the software giant Oracle and, according to the Forbes 400 list, the fourth-richest person in the United States, behind Meta‘s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos, and X‘s Elon Musk. As The New York Times (4/2/25) noted, Larry “is putting up most of the $8 billion bid by his son, David, to buy Paramount.”
The elder Ellison is well-known for his contributions to conservative causes (Vox, 2/12/20; Washington Post, 5/20/22). He gave $4 million to a super PAC supporting Marco Rubio’s presidential bid (Politico, 2/20/16), and $15 million to one backing Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) (Politico, 2/19/22).
Slate (9/14/20) called Oracle the “Trump Administration’s Favorite Tech Company,” as evidenced by the fact that Trump picked Oracle to potentially “partner” with TikTok, giving the Chinese-owned social media company a reliable ideological watchdog in order to avoid a congressionally mandated ban (FAIR.org, 12/6/24).
Shared ‘Zionist Values’
One thing the Ellisons agree on is wholehearted support for Zionism. In 2017, Larry Ellison gave $16.6 million to the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/5/17). Two years ago, the Hollywood Reporter (10/13/23) reported that “Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, has committed $1 million to humanitarian relief efforts in Israel” in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. It quoted the company:
Skydance stands with Israel, strongly condemns the attacks against its citizens, is donating support to the victims of this tragic act of terrorism, and prays for the safe release of innocents hostages.
Last year, The Jerusalem Post (7/31/24) ran a story “written in cooperation with SkyDance” that highlighted support for Israel by David Ellison and Redstone’s son, “Brandon Korff, heir to the Paramount empire.” The article quoted a “source familiar with the details” who described Ellison and Korff sharing “Zionist values” and noted that “both quietly donate quite a bit to the state of Israel and the [Israel Defense Forces.]”
Redstone herself has been an outspoken Zionist during her time at the head of Paramount; when CBS admonished host Tony Dokoupil for his hostile interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Dokoupil suggested that Coates was an “extremist” on Palestine, Redstone publicly criticized network management (LA Times, 10/9/24).
Given the talks with Weiss and The Free Press, one might expect CBS coverage to skew even further to the right on the Middle East, as well as on the Trump’s administration effort to clamp down on critical speech against Israel’s genocide and its support from the U.S. While Weiss’s brand is all about free speech, she got her start in politics agitating for the censorship of professors with pro-Palestinian views (Jewish Currents, 7/23/20).
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'Hard to Think of Anything More Defiant': Paramount-Owned 'South Park' Shreds Company's Capitulation to Trump
The episode depicted Trump literally in bed with Satan.
Jul 24, 2025
The creators of the satirical cartoon "South Park" on Wednesday evening ripped into Paramount mere hours after they signed a $1.5 billion streaming deal with the media giant.
The season premiere of the show's 27th season featured U.S. President Donald Trump filing a lawsuit against residents of the cartoon's fictional small town in Colorado for exercising their First Amendment rights to protest against him.
The show included a satirical depiction of CBS News' "60 Minutes" covering the protests where the hosts of the show nervously insisted that Trump was "a great man" as they sought to avoid the president's wrath. At one point, a "60 Minutes" journalist emphasized that "just to be clear, we don't agree" with the South Park protesters.
At the end of the episode, Jesus Christ descended upon the town and urged residents to capitulate to Trump to avoid hurting the settlement Paramount reached with Trump earlier this year that critics have called a payoff in exchange for approval of the company's proposed $8 billion merger with studio Skydance Media.
"You really want to end up like Colbert?" Christ asked the South Park residents, in reference to the recent decision to cancel the late-night talk show hosted by frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert.
The episode also depicted Trump literally in bed with Satan.
Dylan Byers, a senior correspondent with Puck News, said that the "South Park" episode amounted to a giant middle finger aimed at both the president and the company that just agreed to pay the creators a massive sum of money to continue producing shows.
"Hard to think of anything more defiant in media and entertainment recently than Trey Parker and Matt Stone going scorched earth on Paramount in a 'South Park' season premiere on the heels of netting a $1.5 billion deal with the very same company," he wrote on social media platform X.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers lashed out at the show, which she described as "hanging on by a thread" despite the fact that it just got a $1.5 billion megadeal.
"President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country's history—and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump's hot streak," Rogers said, according to NBC News.
On the other side of the political spectrum, frequent Trump antagonist Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) gave the series premiere what appeared to be an enthusiastic endorsement and wrote a message on her X account that simply read, "SOUTH PARK!!!"
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Stephen Colbert’s Firing: The Critical Unanswered Question
Why now? It was either pandering to Trump, management’s incompetence, or both.
Jul 21, 2025
Timing is everything.
The news that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will end in May 2026 has focused on whether his termination was part of a “deal” (implicit or explicit) to get Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval of the pending merger between CBS’ parent company Paramount and Skydance Media. If so, it was another “bend-the-knee” moment in the media’s ongoing capitulation to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on democracy’s foundational institutions.
But the timing of the announcement itself is raises a critical unanswered question: Why now? It was either pandering to Trump, management’s incompetence, or both.
The Cast of Characters
Skydance’s owner David Ellison is the son of Oracle’s billionaire founder Larry Ellison, Trump’s friend and supporter.
Through her family’s holding company National Amusements, Sheri Redstone owns a controlling interest in Paramount and is a member of its board of directors.
If the FCC approves the Skydance-Paramount merger announced in July 2024, Skydance will pay National Amusements $2.4 billion.
Comic Stephen Colbert has become one of Trump’s fiercest TV critics. Beginning in 2016 and continuing for nine consecutive seasons, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” has been the highest-rated program in its time slot.
The Timeline
- In September 2024, Trump urged CBS to fire Colbert.
- Days before the 2024 election, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit accusing CBS of bias in broadcasting a “60 Minutes” interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The complaint alleged that the edited interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in Harris’ favor.
- Prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said that “the First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation.” Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet called it “ridiculous junk and should be mocked.” Attorney Charles Tobin warned, “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”
- February 6, 2025: Redstone told the Paramount board that she wanted to settle Trump’s lawsuit.
- April 13: Trump said that CBS “should lose their license” and he hoped that his appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr “will impose the maximum fine and punishment.”
- April 22: The producer of “60 Minutes”—a 30-year veteran of CBS—resigned with this warning: “[O]ver the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for “60 Minutes,” right for the audience.”
- April 27: “60 Minutes” co-anchor Scott Pelley praised Owens and offered an unprecedented on-air rebuke of Paramount: “Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial—lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair—he was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
- May 4: “60 Minutes” aired a segment quoting prominent attorneys criticizing Trump for unlawfully targeting Big Law firms. In response, Trump threatened to sue CBS for defamation again, but he never did.
- July 1: CBS settled Trump’s frivolous “60 Minutes” lawsuit regarding the Harris interview by contributing $16 million toward Trump’s future presidential library.
- July 14: In Colbert’s first appearance after a two-week vacation, he returned to “The Late Show” and joked that Paramount’s settlement with Trump was “a big fat bribe.”
- July 15: Skydance’s David Ellison was in Washington to meet with FCC chairman Carr and other FCC officials. Later the company said that Ellison “discussed Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’ editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.”
- July 17: During the taping of “The Late Show,” Colbert informed his audience that CBS had informed him the prior evening that he and his program had been terminated, effective May 2026.
- July 18: Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings…”
The Other Possibility: Mismanagement
Already swirling in controversy over the departure of “60 Minutes” producer and settling the Trump case, Paramount and CBS anticipated the outrage and skepticism that terminating Colbert and “The Late Show” would generate. Contemporaneously with Colbert’s firing, George Cheeks (co-CEO of Paramount Global and president and CEO of CBS), Amy Reisenbach (president of CBS Entertainment), and David Stapf (president of CBS Studios) issued a statement declaring: “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Following the announcement, “leaked” reports from anonymous CBS sources and “sources close to the network” suggested that “The Late Show” was losing millions of dollars yearly.
Maybe it was. But that argument proves too much.
“[T]wo people familiar with the show’s finances” told The New York Times anonymously that the show “was racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year.” If true, the losses weren’t a new problem. And there’s no evidence that CBS gave Colbert, who produces the top-rated show, an opportunity to explore less expensive production possibilities.
So why announce cancellation of the program 10 months before it would leave the air in mid-2026?
It’s possible—but unlikely—that Colbert’s contract required 10-months’ advance notice of termination. But if so, CBS’ failure to include such context to blunt the otherwise apparent connection to the merger was a profound management failure.
On the other hand, if Colbert’s contract did not require 10 months advance notice prior to termination, the announcement was either: 1) one more effort to grease the Paramount-Skydance merger skids by “bending the knee” to Trump; or 2) a different management failure that intensified the preexisting cloud over CBS’ integrity.
Either way, Paramount and CBS owe shareholders and viewers an answer to a simple question: Why now?
Their first press release was an exercise in obfuscation.
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Writers Union Calls for Bribery Probe of Paramount After Colbert Cancellation
The Writers Guild of America voiced concern that Paramount is "sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval."
Jul 20, 2025
The Writers Guild of America is calling on New York's attorney general to launch a bribery investigation into Paramount Global following the cancellation of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
WGA, some of whose members worked on the CBS show, said in a statement that while "cancellations are part of the business," a "corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society."
"Paramount's decision comes against a backdrop of relentless attacks on a free press by President Trump, through lawsuits against CBS and ABC, threatened litigation of media organizations with critical coverage, and the unconscionable defunding of PBS and NPR," the union said.
WGA noted that the show's cancellation—which CBS insisted was a "purely financial" decision—came after Colbert criticized Paramount's $16 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump.
In a July 15 segment, aired 48 hours prior to his show's cancellation, Colbert called the settlement with Trump a "big, fat bribe" aimed at greasing federal approval of Paramount's pending merger with the entertainment company Skydance. Paramount owns CBS, and Paramount's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has reportedly been monitoring the network's coverage of the president.
The day of the Colbert segment, the CEO of Skydance met with Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to discuss the pending merger.
In its statement, WGA urged New York Attorney General Letitia James to investigate "potential wrongdoing" at Paramount, which is headquartered in New York City.
"Given Paramount's recent capitulation to President Trump in the CBS News lawsuit, the Writers Guild of America has significant concerns that 'The Late Show' cancellation is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval," the union said. "We call on our elected leaders to hold those responsible to account, to demand answers about why this beloved program was canceled, and to assure the public that Colbert and his writers were not censored due to their views or the whims of the president."
Ahead of the official settlement announcement, California's Senate launched an investigation into whether Paramount "violated state laws against bribery and unfair competition" by offering Trump $15 million to end the legal fight, Semafor reported.
After news of the settlement deal broke earlier this month, Democratic U.S. senators called for a federal investigation.
"With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. "Paramount has refused to provide answers to a congressional inquiry, so I'm calling for a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken."
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Colbert's Termination Is a Win for Trump—and the Corporate Assault on Dissent
The conglomerates that dominate our media and our society have one and only one value: profit-maximization.
Jul 19, 2025
When media critic A.J. Liebling wrote in The New Yorker 65 years ago that “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” he might have glimpsed a media system dangerously dominated by a small number of companies.
But it’s unlikely he could have foreseen a president as authoritarian as Donald Trump, and media conglomerates eager to capitulate to him.
Thanks to the Paramount conglomerate and its greed-fueled boss, Shari Redstone, the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will vanish next year. After the Trump administration responds by approving the Paramount merger with Skydance, Redstone will be roughly $2 billion richer than she is today, and Paramount/CBS may become even more Trump-friendly.
Months ago, when I predicted the demise of Colbert or “The Daily Show,” another Paramount property, it sounded paranoid. But now it’s reality. (“The Daily Show” may be next on the chopping block.)
In recent months, we’ve seen one media conglomerate after another offer what amounted to multimillion-dollar bribes to Trump by settling frivolous Trump lawsuits that these companies could not possibly have lost in court.
Last December, the Disney Company paid Trump a thinly-disguised bribe—$15 million to Trump’s future presidential library—to settle a harassment lawsuit against ABC News over a segment mentioning E. Jean Carroll’s victorious case against Trump.
In January, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta made a bribe-like payment of $25 million to Trump to settle a ridiculous lawsuit after the company followed its own well-understood guidelines and suspended Trump from Facebook and Instagram for inciting violence on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. (Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November and Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural fund.)
But there was a snag in settlement negotiations between Paramount and Trump over an even more laughable suit he could never win in court. This one concerned how CBS “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with Kamala Harris, a suit that Paramount had called “meritless.”
During negotiations, respected executive producer of “60 Minutes” Bill Owens resigned over Paramount meddling, soon followed by the resignation of the CEO of CBS News. But that wasn’t enough to get the suit settled, and it was far from sufficient to get the Trump administration to approve the Paramount merger. That’s when I worried that Colbert or Jon Stewart would have to be sacrificed to placate the authoritarian-in-chief and get Paramount and Redstone the riches that a merger would bring.
Three weeks ago, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle the suit, amid rumors of side deals that content would shift at the new Paramount. And now Colbert, one of Trump’s most effective critics, is being shown the door. On Monday’s show, Colbert carried on at length, making fun of what he called Paramount’s “big, fat bribe.”
Colbert is funny.
What’s not funny is that our country’s democratic experiment is on the verge of collapse—and it has less to do with Trump than with the capitulation of corporate liberals and corporate centrist institutions to Trump.
Big universities have capitulated. Big law firms have capitulated. Big media companies have capitulated.
The lesson to be learned from today’s political reality is that big corporate institutions don’t care about democracy or free speech. They will bend the political system toward their own economic benefit—and be complicit with authoritarianism if it keeps getting them wealthier.
The conglomerates that dominate our media and our society have one and only one value: profit-maximization. This was pretty much admitted by Shari Redstone’s late father, Sumner, who built the Viacom (now Paramount) media conglomerate. Sumner Redstone was considered a liberal, a son of Massachusetts who’d been friendly with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate for president. But Redstone famously endorsed George W. Bush for president in 2004.
As Redstone explained: “I vote for what’s good for Viacom. I vote, today, Viacom... I don’t want to denigrate Kerry, but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on.”
I know I’m not the only progressive who has survived the Trump years with my sanity intact thanks in large part to TV comedians employed by media conglomerates: Colbert (Paramount), Jon Stewart and team (Paramount), Jimmy Kimmel (Disney), Seth Meyers (Comcast); and the best investigative journalist on mainstream TV, John Oliver (Warner Discovery).
There’s a quote usually attributed—perhaps inaccurately—to George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
I’ve offered a twist on this quote for the Trump era: “In a time of political craziness, keeping one’s sanity is a revolutionary act.”
It’s hard to stay sane without laughter, and the comedians listed above are often uplifting. But just as we’ve moved to independent news outlets out of distrust for corporate news, we’re likely to be looking outside the media conglomerates for our comedy when many a truth is truly spoken in jest.
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