Stephen Colbert isn’t buying what CBS is selling, and he made that abundantly clear on Tuesday night when he held up the network’s carefully worded denial statement and called it exactly what he thinks it is.
“I don’t even know what to do with this crap,” the Late Show host told his audience, before pulling out a plastic doggy bag, sealing the printed statement inside, and tossing it in the trash. It was the kind of theatrical gesture that gets a laugh, but behind the comedy was something far more serious: a veteran late-night host publicly accusing his own network of lying about censoring a political interview, then cowering before the Trump administration’s escalating pressure on broadcast media.
What Actually Happened
The drama started Monday night when Colbert told his studio audience that CBS lawyers had called The Late Show staff and told them “in no uncertain terms” that they could not air a pre-taped interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat running in the primary for a U.S. Senate seat. The reason? Fear that the interview could trigger the FCC’s “equal time” rule, which requires broadcasters to offer equivalent airtime to all candidates running for the same office.
Here’s the critical context: late-night talk shows have been explicitly exempt from equal time requirements for decades under a “bona fide news interview” exception. But FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, issued new guidance in January suggesting that exemption may no longer apply. Carr hasn’t actually eliminated the exception. He’s merely hinted that he might. And that was apparently enough to spook CBS into preemptive compliance.
Colbert, defying what he says were direct orders not to even mention the pulled interview, spent a significant chunk of Monday’s broadcast explaining the situation to viewers and directing them to the full Talarico interview on YouTube, where it has since racked up more than 5 million views.
CBS Fires Back, Colbert Fires Harder
Then came Tuesday afternoon, when CBS released a statement that read like it was drafted by a committee of corporate lawyers terrified of angering absolutely everyone. The network claimed that “The Late Show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico.” Instead, CBS said the show “was provided legal guidance” about potential equal time implications involving two other Democratic candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and was “presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.”
In CBS’s telling, The Late Show chose on its own to put the interview on YouTube rather than deal with those equal time obligations. It was a neat bit of corporate reframing: we didn’t block anything, we just explained the consequences, and the show made its own decision.
Colbert wasn’t having it.
“They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air,” Colbert said Tuesday night. He then revealed something that underscored just how unusual the situation was: between his monologue and the second act of Monday’s show, he was pulled backstage to receive additional legal notes from CBS lawyers dictating the specific language he was allowed to use when discussing the pulled interview. That, Colbert said, had “never, ever happened before” in 11 seasons of The Late Show.
“This is a surprisingly small piece of paper considering how many butts it’s trying to cover,” Colbert said of the CBS statement. “Clearly this statement was written by, and I’m guessing for, lawyers.”
The Bigger Picture: Paramount’s $108 Billion Problem
To understand why CBS would preemptively enforce an FCC rule that hasn’t actually changed, you have to follow the money, and there’s a lot of it in play right now.
CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, is currently in the middle of a massive hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery valued at roughly $108 billion. The deal, backed by $43.6 billion in equity commitments personally guaranteed by Larry Ellison (Oracle co-founder and father of Paramount CEO David Ellison), would create one of the largest media conglomerates in history. As of this week, WBD has opened a seven-day negotiating window with Paramount, even as its board continues to officially back a competing $83 billion deal with Netflix.
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable for CBS: any Paramount-WBD merger would require federal regulatory approval. That means Paramount needs the Trump administration’s blessing. And Trump’s FCC, led by Chairman Carr, has been increasingly aggressive about using regulatory leverage against broadcast networks. The FCC investigated ABC’s The View earlier this month for hosting Talarico, which appears to have been the direct trigger for CBS’s caution.
The calculus is painfully transparent: Paramount needs Washington’s cooperation on the biggest media deal of the decade, and CBS is the asset most visibly in the crosshairs of Trump-aligned regulators. Blocking a Democratic candidate’s interview on a show the network already canceled (CBS announced in July that The Late Show would end in May 2026, citing financial losses of $40 million annually) is a relatively low-cost way to signal compliance.
The White House Response Says Everything
If there was any remaining doubt about the political dimensions of this story, the White House put that to rest with a statement that dispensed with even the pretense of addressing the free press implications. “Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck with no talent and terrible ratings, which is exactly why CBS canceled his show and is booting him off the airwaves,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said. “FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is simply doing his job and enforcing the rules.”
The sole Democrat on the FCC, Commissioner Anna Gomez, saw things rather differently, calling Carr’s recent equal time guidance an effort to “weaponize the FCC’s regulatory authority to intimidate perceived critics of this Administration and chill protected speech.”
Colbert’s Challenge To Paramount
What made Tuesday night’s segment notable wasn’t just the doggy bag theatrics. It was Colbert’s direct challenge to Paramount’s leadership. “I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies,” he said. “Come on, you’re Paramount. No, no, you’re more than that. You’re Paramount Plus. Plus what? I guess we’re all going to find out pretty soon.”
That last line landed with the weight of someone who knows his show is ending in three months, who has nothing left to lose, and who watched his employer throw him under the bus in a press release without so much as a phone call first. “And for the lawyers to release this without even talking to me is really surprising,” Colbert added.
He was careful to say he’s “not even mad” and doesn’t want “an adversarial relationship with the network.” But actions speak louder than diplomatic phrasing, and Colbert’s actions this week have been the most pointed public confrontation between a host and their network since the Trump administration began pressuring broadcast media.
What This Means For Broadcast Media
The Colbert-CBS standoff is the latest in a pattern that’s becoming impossible to ignore. Last summer, ABC briefly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show after FCC pressure. Paramount settled a lawsuit with Trump for $16 million over a “60 Minutes” interview edit, days before the FCC approved the Paramount-Skydance merger. Now CBS is preemptively enforcing rules that haven’t actually been changed, based on guidance from an FCC chairman who hasn’t formally revoked existing exemptions.
The chilling effect is working exactly as designed. Networks don’t need to be explicitly told what they can’t do. They just need to understand what might happen if they do it, especially when they have $108 billion deals pending before the same regulators issuing the warnings.
Meanwhile, the interview CBS deemed too dangerous for broadcast television has been watched more than 5 million times on YouTube, making it by far the most-viewed Late Show clip in months. Talarico, for his part, has used the controversy to boost his Senate campaign as early voting in the Texas Democratic primary began Tuesday. He faces Rep. Jasmine Crockett in what polls suggest is a tight race, with the winner set to take on either incumbent Sen. John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the general election.
Colbert summed up the absurdity best: the interview CBS wouldn’t air ended up being seen by millions more people than a typical Late Show segment ever reaches. The network tried to bury a conversation and accidentally turned it into the biggest story in media this week.
That’s the thing about trying to silence a late-night comedian with three months left on his contract. He doesn’t have much incentive to stay quiet.
Here is the interview with Talarico which was only shown online.