CBS Surrenders to Trump
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/ February 17, 2026
CBS Surrenders to Trump
The network tried to bury an interview critical of Trump. Stephen Colbert made it an indictment of the administration’s assaults on the First Amendment.
Chris Lehmann
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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
(Scott Kowalchyk / CBS via Getty Images)
Just a week after the centibillionaire owner of The Washington Post ravaged its news operations in the service of plutocratic impunity, the news regime installed by the centibillionaire owner of CBS News has said, in essence, “Hold my beer.” After Late Show host Stephen Colbert had scheduled an interview with Democratic Texas state Representative James Talarico, the network’s legal division told him to cancel the segment. The rationale for the move was the same pretext that the Federal Communications Commission cited in opening a ludicrous regulatory investigation into Talarico’s earlier appearance on ABC’s daytime talk show, The View: Featuring a candidate for office during an election cycle without also hosting that candidate’s opponents was a violation of the agency’s equal-time doctrine.
News reports and talk-show appearances have long fallen out of the ambit of equal time, because news consumers benefit from hearing the views of candidates when they’re up for election—the exemption basically holds that viewers of such shows can be expected to act like adults who can discern the difference between public affairs and entertainment fare and straight news coverage. But Brendon Carr, the MAGA hack Donald Trump appointed to head the FCC in his second term, is hell-bent on abolishing these genre distinctions and transforming the enforcement of equal-time regulations to benefit right-wing candidates. He is continuing to stoke the media-persecution mania at the core of Trump’s grievance politics. This debased reasoning led Carr to pressure ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing MAGA theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Even though Carr has yet to float a formal revision of equal-time strictures, the Trump White House’s multifront assault on media independence has advanced to the point where, as Colbert noted in his opening monologue, “my network is already acting as though he had.”
CBS’s lawyers counseled Colbert to refrain not only from airing his Talarico interview but from discussing the decision to yank it on the air. But since CBS announced last year that it’s canceling Colbert’s show in the spring, he invoked the hallowed privilege of the short timer—what are they going to do, fire me?—to target CBS and Carr in his opening monologue and post his interview with Talarico on the show’s YouTube page. (You can watch …
This framing isn't accidental.
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Current Issue
Society
/ February 17, 2026
CBS Surrenders to Trump
The network tried to bury an interview critical of Trump. Stephen Colbert made it an indictment of the administration’s assaults on the First Amendment.
Chris Lehmann
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
(Scott Kowalchyk / CBS via Getty Images)
Just a week after the centibillionaire owner of The Washington Post ravaged its news operations in the service of plutocratic impunity, the news regime installed by the centibillionaire owner of CBS News has said, in essence, “Hold my beer.” After Late Show host Stephen Colbert had scheduled an interview with Democratic Texas state Representative James Talarico, the network’s legal division told him to cancel the segment. The rationale for the move was the same pretext that the Federal Communications Commission cited in opening a ludicrous regulatory investigation into Talarico’s earlier appearance on ABC’s daytime talk show, The View: Featuring a candidate for office during an election cycle without also hosting that candidate’s opponents was a violation of the agency’s equal-time doctrine.
News reports and talk-show appearances have long fallen out of the ambit of equal time, because news consumers benefit from hearing the views of candidates when they’re up for election—the exemption basically holds that viewers of such shows can be expected to act like adults who can discern the difference between public affairs and entertainment fare and straight news coverage. But Brendon Carr, the MAGA hack Donald Trump appointed to head the FCC in his second term, is hell-bent on abolishing these genre distinctions and transforming the enforcement of equal-time regulations to benefit right-wing candidates. He is continuing to stoke the media-persecution mania at the core of Trump’s grievance politics. This debased reasoning led Carr to pressure ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing MAGA theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Even though Carr has yet to float a formal revision of equal-time strictures, the Trump White House’s multifront assault on media independence has advanced to the point where, as Colbert noted in his opening monologue, “my network is already acting as though he had.”
CBS’s lawyers counseled Colbert to refrain not only from airing his Talarico interview but from discussing the decision to yank it on the air. But since CBS announced last year that it’s canceling Colbert’s show in the spring, he invoked the hallowed privilege of the short timer—what are they going to do, fire me?—to target CBS and Carr in his opening monologue and post his interview with Talarico on the show’s YouTube page. (You can watch …
CBS Surrenders to Trump
This framing isn't accidental.
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CBS Surrenders to Trump
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Current Issue
Society
/ February 17, 2026
CBS Surrenders to Trump
The network tried to bury an interview critical of Trump. Stephen Colbert made it an indictment of the administration’s assaults on the First Amendment.
Chris Lehmann
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
(Scott Kowalchyk / CBS via Getty Images)
Just a week after the centibillionaire owner of The Washington Post ravaged its news operations in the service of plutocratic impunity, the news regime installed by the centibillionaire owner of CBS News has said, in essence, “Hold my beer.” After Late Show host Stephen Colbert had scheduled an interview with Democratic Texas state Representative James Talarico, the network’s legal division told him to cancel the segment. The rationale for the move was the same pretext that the Federal Communications Commission cited in opening a ludicrous regulatory investigation into Talarico’s earlier appearance on ABC’s daytime talk show, The View: Featuring a candidate for office during an election cycle without also hosting that candidate’s opponents was a violation of the agency’s equal-time doctrine.
News reports and talk-show appearances have long fallen out of the ambit of equal time, because news consumers benefit from hearing the views of candidates when they’re up for election—the exemption basically holds that viewers of such shows can be expected to act like adults who can discern the difference between public affairs and entertainment fare and straight news coverage. But Brendon Carr, the MAGA hack Donald Trump appointed to head the FCC in his second term, is hell-bent on abolishing these genre distinctions and transforming the enforcement of equal-time regulations to benefit right-wing candidates. He is continuing to stoke the media-persecution mania at the core of Trump’s grievance politics. This debased reasoning led Carr to pressure ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing MAGA theories about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Even though Carr has yet to float a formal revision of equal-time strictures, the Trump White House’s multifront assault on media independence has advanced to the point where, as Colbert noted in his opening monologue, “my network is already acting as though he had.”
CBS’s lawyers counseled Colbert to refrain not only from airing his Talarico interview but from discussing the decision to yank it on the air. But since CBS announced last year that it’s canceling Colbert’s show in the spring, he invoked the hallowed privilege of the short timer—what are they going to do, fire me?—to target CBS and Carr in his opening monologue and post his interview with Talarico on the show’s YouTube page. (You can watch …
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