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When you come right down to it, Stephen Colbert’s job is to get laughs.
And, night after night, find new ways to slam Donald Trump.
Now he’s at war with his own network over an interview he was ordered not to run.
The spectacle of the No. 1 late-night host slamming his corporate bosses is, well, pretty entertaining, but also raises important issues about free speech and government pressure.
Late night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have both found themselves at the center of overtly partisan discussions. (Getty Images)
Anyway, what’s CBS gonna do, fire him? The new owners, the Skydance billionaires who bought Paramount, had already decided to end “The Late Show” in May. So that, in a sense, has liberated the network’s biggest star.
The backstory is that the FCC has been making noises about ending the exemption of late-night and daytime talk shows from the equal-time rule.
Under a plan floated by Chairman Brendan Carr, President Trump’s appointee, these shows, if they interview a candidate, would be required to offer opponents an equal block of time.
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But when Colbert taped a largely sympathetic sitdown with James Talarico, a Democratic state rep in Texas now running for the Senate, the FCC didn’t have to lift a finger. CBS took care of the matter. Network lawyers even summoned Colbert for consultations while he was taping Monday’s show.
Colbert told viewers these lawyers directly ordered him not to air the interview. This has been a political gift, by the way, for Talarico, who is now running around billing the encounter as the interview Trump doesn’t want you to see. He raised $2.5 million in the following 24 hours. He’s running against another Democrat, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, in the primaries.
Carr’s argument is that programs like the “Late Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The View” don’t deserve to be treated like news shows, with their automatic exemption from equal time, if they are overly partisan.
Colbert has found himself at war with CBS over an interview with James Talarico, a Democrat running for the seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)
The problem for conservatives, who are understandably weary of all the Trump-bashing, is that a Democratic administration could use the precedent to crack down on programming from the right.
Colbert told the audience that he’d even been ordered not to talk about the canceled interview – and proceeded to do just that.
On Tuesday, CBS hit back with a statement saying no no no, we never ordered our man Stephen to kill the interview, just advised him about legal options involving the equal-time rule. Colbert wouldn’t let it drop, proclaiming Tuesday evening that every single script is approved in advance by the legal beagles.
“Without ever talking to me, the corporation put out this press release, this statement,” Colbert said, holding the document up for the audience. “This is a surprisingly small piece of paper considering how many butts it’s trying to cover.
“They know d— well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS’s lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air.”
“For lawyers to release this without even talking to me is really surprising. I don’t even know what to do with this crap,” he said, before tossing it into a bag for disposal like a week-old fish.
Colbert wasn’t done: “I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.”
For what it’s worth, you can watch the interview now posted on YouTube, which is beyond the reach of the FCC. It’s already been viewed more than 5 million times, drawing far more attention than it would have had the segment aired on CBS as scheduled.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN and other cable outlets, agreed to resume talks with Skydance/CBS – which Trump would prefer – after having made a deal to sell itself with Netflix. The implied threat of an antitrust probe if Skydance gets the nod casts a shadow over the process.
Carr, for his part, spoke to reporters at a presser yesterday, calling it a “hoax” that his agency had anything to do with CBS’s decision. He described it “a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media.”
What’s more, the chairman said, “I think you guys should feel a bit ashamed for having been lied to and then just run with those lies. I think it was an embarrassing episode for the media.”
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Whatever Carr’s influence or lack thereof, he played a role in the decision last year by Disney, ABC’s parent company, to pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air.
Kimmel made a mistake, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in erroneously claiming the killer was part of the MAGA movement. Carr said this was biased reporting and raised questions about ABC’s broadcast license.
This made it appear, fairly or not, that Disney was bowing to government pressure.
The move, as you’ll recall, turned out to be a huge blunder. The backlash was so great that Kimmel was put back on the air a week later.
But now Kimmel has crossed another line.
Kimmel, meanwhile, will be hosting a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next month. (Michael Le Brecht/Disney via Getty Images)
He is hosting an L.A. fundraiser next month for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Tickets for the event, which will feature Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi, are going for a minimum of $25,000. For those willing to pay more, tickets range from $44,000 for the “Leader’s Circle” to $310,100 for the “Jeffries 300,” according to the invitation.
Having played a small role by interviewing Trump about his feud with Jimmy, which escalated their rhetoric, I don’t think ABC should allow this. Anyone who watches Kimmel’s show for five minutes knows he’s vociferously anti-Trump.
But helping one political party raise big bucks should be verboten. It obliterates any defense against excessive partisanship.
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Fifteen years ago, MSNBC suspended popular host Keith Olbermann without pay after he acknowledged donating the maximum $2,400 to three Democrats running for office, one of whom was a guest on his show.
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But times have apparently changed, with more zeroes involved, ABC really needs to address this. And so, by the way, should Jimmy Kimmel.