Stephen Colbert mocks CBS over The Late Show’s cancellation and $16M Trump settlement, promising unfiltered truth in his final months on air.
Stephen Colbert opened his Monday night episode of The Late Show with trademark wit, riffing on everything from NFL team name changes to his own program’s impending cancellation.
After entering the Ed Sullivan Theater to enthusiastic applause, Colbert quipped that “cancel culture has gone too far,” poking fun at the announcement that his show will end in May. He thanked well‑wishers—jokingly including an anonymous text offering him a high‑pay, part‑time IT job—and promised to send his routing number once “Daddy needs a job.”
Over the weekend, the reality of CBS pulling the plug on The Late Show “sunk in,” Colbert admitted, but he viewed it as an opportunity rather than a setback.
With ten months remaining on air, he declared the “gloves are off,” promising unfettered criticism of political figures—particularly Donald Trump, whom he mocked as lacking “the skillset to be President.”
Colbert seized on the timing of the cancellation, drawing a line between his hard‑hitting monologue two days earlier—during which he derided CBS’s $16 million settlement with Trump as a “big fat bribe”—and the network’s decision to end his run.
He coined the term “stashism,” lampooning executives’ apparent sensitivity to his mustache joke, and quipped that the Ed Sullivan Theater might be repurposed into a self‑storage facility.
Despite the jabs, Colbert maintained a cordial tone toward CBS, thanking them for the “very nice things” in their press release.
He noted their insistence that the cancellation was purely financial even though The Late Show remains the network’s top‑rated late‑night program. Colbert wryly observed that the claim of annual production losses between $40 million and $50 million raised questions—particularly from his staff’s parents and spouses—about where the money was going.
Turning serious for a moment, he suggested that while losing $24 million might be conceivable, the remaining $16 million likely corresponded to the Trump settlement.
His dig underscored a broader critique of network priorities and set the tone for what many expect to be his most unapologetic months on air. As Colbert signaled, the end of The Late Show may mark the beginning of his sharpest commentary yet.
