DAVID MARCUS: Stephen Colbert’s character is the latest never-Trump Republican to fall.
Just as is the case with Never Trump pundits, Colbert’s Never Trump late night TV host is not only tired now, but utterly pointless and irrelevant. The Republican that Colbert has spent his career pretending to be, simply doesn’t exist anymore.
As news of Colbert’s cancellation spread, we saw from the usual suspects on the Left dire warnings about government censorship and authoritarianism. It’s all a flaming bag of nonsense.
If, as these wackos presume, CBS buckled to Trump to get their parent company Paramount’s merger with Skydance past the administration even though Colbert is the biggest star in late night, then surely a rival network would scoop him up. That’s how value in entertainment works.
But the problem for Colbert is that the entire basis of his character, and frankly, career, has disintegrated under his feet as it has for so many who made their entire lives about defeating Donald Trump.
Colbert’s caricature of a mid-level manager white guy who just wants low taxes and his kids not to be gay and doesn’t read books depicts nobody in reality. It is a figment of elite, urban, progressive fearmongers.
It was another famous late-night host named Johnny Carson who once turned the tables on legendary insult comedian Don Rickles, by quipping, “Don is a great comedian, I love his joke.”
Sadly, though Carson was kidding, this really is the fate that Colbert suffered. He only had one joke, and that joke isn’t funny anymore.
So, RIP to the “Late Show” and to Never Trump, two things that time and fortune have passed by, under the watchful eye of Donald J. Trump.
Colbert wasn’t exactly bringing in hip young viewers to CBS:
The average age of Colbert’s viewers is two years older than Johnny Carson was when he retired from the Tonight Show in 1992 at age 66.
UPDATE: The unwatchably awful Stephen Colbert interview that proves why he was doomed.
In a June 2024 profile with Entertainment Weekly, Colbert pulled out a photo not of late-night legends Johnny Carson or David Letterman but famed news anchor Walter Cronkite.
‘This is my reminder,’ Colbert intoned, ‘that Walter Cronkite started off as a morning anchor who had a puppet lion, so let’s not hear about the dignity of CBS News. F**k you.’*
The arrogance. The hubris. Colbert was paid a reported $15 million a year, yet insulted his bosses in print and on his show — and thought he was too important to face consequences!
Instead, of course, he and his cohort blame Trump — who, frankly, has bigger problems to deal with than this late-night hack.
‘Everyone knows what happened,’ a Colbert show source told the Daily Mail. ‘He came out against Trump and now he’s gone.’
Or maybe he just bleeds $40 million annually and can’t book any guests bigger than Rep. Adam Schiff, who told President Trump to ‘piss off’ on Thursday night’s show.
It’s similarly grim for the apolitical Jimmy Fallon, cut down from five to four nights a week at NBC; Seth Meyers, who had to fire his band after budget cuts; and
Jimmy Kimmel, whose viewing figures lag some 600,000 behind Colbert.‘F**k CBS,’ said Kimmel this week.
How brave. How impactful. Listen, Kimmel — your days are numbered, too.
Ultra-liberal Jon Stewart, who returned to his desk at The Daily Show after all manner of other projects failed to launch, on whether his own show will last much longer: ‘I honestly don’t know. They may sell the whole f**king place for parts.’
These guys just refuse to get the memo. They still cling to the sinking ship of liberal legacy media and linear TV, which viewers are rejecting in droves.
* That’s such a telling quote. Colbert will be much more comfortable hosting a leftty political interview show on CNN or MSNBC, rather than a late night show in the mold of Carson and Letterman:
Given where Colbert began, Jon Stewart can look back at having destroyed shows like CNN’s Crossfire, in which both sides battled it out on issues, and greatly accelerated the death of the late night talk show. That’s quite an awkward legacy for a cable TV host who’s only 62 years old.