President Donald Trump didn’t hold back Friday as he celebrated CBS’s decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, mocking the liberal comedian and hinting that fellow left-wing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel may soon be out of a job as well.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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.”
CBS announced Thursday that Colbert’s show will air its final episode in May 2026, ending a nearly 11-year run after he took over the time slot from David Letterman in 2015. The network said it would retire The Late Show brand entirely rather than find a replacement host.
The move comes after years of plummeting ratings and a noticeable shift in tone, as Colbert turned his platform into a nightly monologue of anti-Trump screeds and partisan commentary. Trump previously called Colbert “a total loser” and “very boring,” criticizing CBS for paying him to be “not funny” while his show hemorrhaged viewers.
In one of his many jabs, Colbert once mocked Trump’s address to Congress, saying it was “filled with useful lies and applauded by useless idiots.”
Democrats rushed to defend Colbert after the announcement. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a frequent guest on the show, suggested the cancellation may have been political, especially after Colbert publicly criticized CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for agreeing to pay a $16 million settlement to Trump over a deceptively edited “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Colbert labeled the settlement a “big fat bribe.”
“Just finished taping with Stephen Colbert who announced his show was cancelled,” Schiff wrote on X. “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren echoed the concern, writing: “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”
Colbert addressed the news Thursday night, telling his audience: “Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
Trump, meanwhile, made it clear that from his view, it can’t go away fast enough.