Donald Trump posted his reaction to CBS announcing the upcoming cancelation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The president said he was saddened by the company’s decision to end such an iconic series, and added that even though Colbert frequently mocked and criticized him over the years, that he nonetheless respected Colbert as media professional and wished him the best of luck moving forward.
Kidding. Trump positively gloated (as we predicted he would), and took shots at ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel and NBC host Jimmy Fallon while he was at it.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! [Fox News late night host] Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
Last night, Kimmel posted his own reaction to CBS’ decision on Instagram, saying, “Love you Stephen. F–k you and all your Sheldons CBS.”
CBS shocked the industry on Thursday by announcing that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will wrap its run in May 2026, following the 2025-26 broadcast season.
The announcement also comes as CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, is hoping to close a merger with Skydance in the next few months. The company recently settled a lawsuit filed last year by Trump (before he was elected to a second term as president) over a 60 Minutes interview with Trump’s election opponent, Kamala Harris. The settlement is widely seen as helping the merger’s chances for approval by the FCC under the Trump administration — and which Colbert criticized earlier this week, calling the $16 million settlement a “big fat bribe.”
In a statement, CBS said the merger wasn’t a factor in the decision and the cancellation was “purely a financial decision” made in a declining linear TV landscape. According to The New York Times, broadcast late-night ad revenue has dropped 50 percent in the last seven years.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season,” read the statement from Paramount co-CEO and CBS president and CEO George Cheeks, CBS Entertainment head Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios president David Stapf. “We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire The Late Show franchise at that time. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television. This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
But as The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Feinberg pointed out, “official reasons and optics are two different things, and if the folks in charge at CBS didn’t know what the optics were, they wouldn’t have released a statement saying that what we think we can see with our eyes and infer with our common sense definitely aren’t the truth. The optics here may not have any connection to facts, but man the optics here suck — and they suck on a slew of levels that are ALL addressed in the statement as things that we’re not supposed to be thinking about but can’t help but think about.”
— Rick Porter contributed to this report