Donald Trump Reacts to Stephen Colbert News, Predicts Who Is Next
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President Donald Trump celebrated the news that CBS is axing Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show", and predicted that ABC's Jimmy Kimmel would be the next host to get the chop.
"I absolutely love that Colbert' got fired," Trump posted to his Truth Social platform on Friday morning, July 18.
"His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show."
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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Yahoo
21 minutes ago
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Commentary: Paramount appeased Trump — but now it has to battle Colbert and all his friends
There may be a new entrant in the annals of corporate hole-digging: Media titan Paramount, which owns CBS and recently said it's canceling the top-rated "Late Show with Stephen Colbert." Paramount said it needs to cancel the Colbert show for 'financial reasons' and leaked reports likely sourced to the company suggest the show loses around $40 million per year. But the decision reeks of Trumpian subterfuge, putting Paramount in the fraught corporate position of picking sides in one of President Trump's many disputes over business and cultural priorities. Paramount plans to merge this year with media firm Skydance, to help stabilize its finances and ease the transition from legacy media behemoth to a nimbler streaming operation. The two companies agreed on the $8 billion deal last year, when Joe Biden was president. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the deal in February. That left the Federal Communications Commission, which must also sign off since the deal involves the transfer of broadcast licenses. FCC approval was 'widely seen as a formality,' as Deadline reported in April. But it didn't come until July 24, months later than would have been likely under any president other than Trump. In the meanwhile, Paramount paid tribute to Trump in unprecedented ways likely to dog the company for months or years, with the cancellation of Colbert's show fueling a barrage of criticism from Colbert himself and many allies, some of it on Paramount's own airwaves. Paramount clearly didn't anticipate this sort of trouble when it arranged the deal last year. But when Trump won the presidency in November, Paramount faced new barriers to a buyout that otherwise might have been routine. That's because of Trump's personal beef with CBS and the news show "60 Minutes." Trump sued the network last year as an individual, claiming the show distorted a 2024 interview with Kamala Harris, Trump's foe in the presidential election, to give her favorable treatment. Shortly after taking office in January, Trump appointed loyalist Brendan Carr to head the FCC. Then Trump converted the formerly independent agency into an arm of the White House's policy and political operations. One of Carr's first moves as Trump's FCC boss was opening an investigation into the CBS for its interview with Harris, an unprecedented effort to use government power to intimidate a news organization. 'The chairman of the FCC has cagily created a new and coercive technique for operating outside the agency's established statutes and procedures to attack corporate decisions he and Donald Trump do not like,' former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler, now of the Brookings Institution, wrote in February. 'Prime targets are media company editorial decisions.' The Los Angeles Times and other news organizations reported that Shari Redstone, non-executive chair of umbrella company Paramount Global, pushed her executives to settle with Trump. Redstone and her family stand to net about $1.75 billion from the Skydance deal. So she has a clear interest in pushing barriers to the deal out of the way. That may explain why earlier this month, Paramount and CBS agreed to settle the Trump lawsuit for $16 million. Colbert roasts Trump regularly on his show and is far more political than David Letterman, whom he replaced in 2015. On July 14, the cheeky host called the $16 million Paramount payment to Trump 'a big, fat bribe'—on CBS's own air. Three days later, Paramount canceled Colbert's show. There's no public evidence that the company axed Colbert to appease Trump. Yet it did please Trump. 'I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,' Trump posted to social media on July 18. 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The memorable ones are those compounded by a corporate reaction that amplifies the original sin and makes everything worse. In 2023, Target tried to back away from its own LGBTQ outreach effort, offending the very people it was wooing and making no new friends in the process. In 2017, United Airlines appeared to defend thuggish security guards who forcibly dragged a passenger off a plane, igniting a firestorm of bad publicity that wiped nearly $1.5 billion off its market value. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick resigned as CEO in 2017 after failing to shake months of controversy over a toxic company culture rife with sexual harassment and discrimination. Those incidents are now textbook examples of how to worsen a crisis, rather than fix it. Paramount now seems headed toward its own chapter in that cringy volume. Colbert, Stewart, et al. won't do Trump any harm, since they've been slamming him for years and have long been speaking to like-minded audiences. But now they're aiming their comedic lances at Paramount, which most of their viewers have probably never thought much about. That will change. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices.
Buzz Feed
22 minutes ago
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Jessie Murph's 1965 Song Backlash — Internet Reactions
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The Verge
23 minutes ago
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Paramount-Skydance merger approved after companies agree to government speech demands
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved Skydance's $8 billion purchase of CBS-owner Paramount after the companies agreed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs but feature a 'diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.' In light of the Trump administration's critiques of CBS's alleged anti-conservative bias — including collecting a $16 million settlement over the president's lawsuit over an allegedly deceptively edited video of then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes — the companies' commitment to address bias in the lawsuit likely means featuring more conservative programming. Skydance agreed to employ an ombudsman for at least two years, 'who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS.' 'Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,' Republican FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement announcing the agency's approval. 'That is why I welcome Skydance's commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.' He said the commitments 'would enable CBS to operate in the public interest and focus on fair, unbiased, and fact-based coverage,' and mark 'another step forward in the FCC's efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination.' Carr also boasts that Skydance 'reaffirms its commitment to localism as a core component of the public interest standard,' and that the approval will 'unleash the investment of $1.5 billion into Paramount.' Carr has made no secret of his distaste for news coverage he sees as disproportionately unfavorable to the right and DEI policies he believes contribute to unfair treatment. He's opened investigations into all three major networks as well as NPR and PBS (NBCUniversal and its owner Comcast are investors in The Verge parent company Vox Media). A week ago, CBS announced it was retiring The Late Show, hosted by Trump critic and comedian Stephen Colbert. The network said it was 'purely a financial decision.' The FCC's only remaining Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, dissented, writing that, 'In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom … Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.' Still, she gave Carr credit for calling a vote on the matter, rather than rubber-stamping the merger through one of the agency's bureaus, like it did for the Verizon-Frontier merger, which similarly required an end to DEI programs. Gomez warns that this agreement is just the canary in the coal mine. 'The Paramount payout and this reckless approval have emboldened those who believe the government can—and should—abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage,' she writes. 'It is a dark chapter in a long and growing record of abuse that threatens press freedom in this country. But such violations endure only when institutions choose capitulation over courage. It is time for companies, journalists, and citizens alike to stand up and speak out, because unchecked and unquestioned power has no rightful place in America.' Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Lauren Feiner Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Business Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Film Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Streaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All TV Shows
