Donald Trump celebrates CBS's end to Stephen Colbert's ‘Late Show'
'I absolutely love that Colbert' got fired,' the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. 'His talent was even less than his ratings.'
The president also took aim at ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and NBC's 'Tonight Show' host Jimmy Fallon, while praising Fox News's Greg Gutfeld, whose talk show 'Gutfeld!' airs an hour earlier than the major late-night shows.
'I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!' Trump wrote. 'Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.'
The company's decision has raised eyebrows because it came just days after Colbert publicly took CBS parent company Paramount Global to task for settling a $16 million lawsuit with Trump.
The comedian has helmed 'The Late Show' since 2015, when he took over for longtime host David Letterman. The program is the most-watched talk show during the 11:35 p.m. timeslot, averaging nearly 2.5 million viewers during the second quarter of this year. Gutfeld, whose show airs an hour earlier and isn't a direct competitor to CBS's program, averaged roughly 3.3 million viewers per show during the same time frame.
The president had a friendly relationship with the conservative host Gutfeld for years.
CBS, in its announcement Thursday, called the Colbert cancellation 'purely a financial decision.'
'It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,' the network said in a statement. 'Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.'
Colbert mocked Paramount Global in his monologue Monday over the CBS parent company's payout to Trump in a dispute over a '60 Minutes' interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign. Paramount is also seeking approval from Trump's Federal Communications Commission for a merger deal with fellow entertainment giant Skydance, Colbert noted.
'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,'' the comedian quipped.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who have been guests on Colbert's show, were among Democrats calling for more transparency on the decision.
'America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons,' Warren wrote Thursday on the social platform X.
'If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,' Schiff wrote on X. The California Democrat was a guest on the show Thursday when the news broke.
Colbert said during Thursday's episode that he was made aware of the move Wednesday.
'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,' he said. 'This is all just going away.'
The comedian also has been one of Trump's fiercest critics and frequently features Democratic guests who oppose the president, including Warren and Schiff.
The looming merger and Trump-Paramount settlement had raised some speculation about his future after the president called for Colbert's firing in a Truth Social post last year.
Updated at 9:55 a.m. EDT
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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