The “Late Show” host ruminated on the network’s surprise decision in an expansive interview with GQ, published Monday, in which he declined to say CBS fired him for political reasons ― but pointedly stopped short of telling others not to stick with their own opinions.
The long-running show is set to end in May 2026. CBS announced the programming change in July, just days after Colbert ripped parent company Paramount Global for settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for between $16 and $32 million that CBS’s own attorneys previously dismissed as “meritless.”
Colbert called the payout a “big fat bribe” on his show. At the time, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump, was threatening to block the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media unless they agreed to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
(Not incidentally, prior to his appointment at the FCC, Carr helped author Project 2025, a sweeping, far-right, fascist playbook that’s so toxic Trump used to deny he had anything to do with it.)
Colbert said he could “understand” why people believe the decision was politically motivated, but he’s not willing to go there himself.
“CBS or the parent corporation … decided to cut a check for $16 million to the president of the United States over a lawsuit that their own lawyers, Paramount’s own lawyers, said is completely without merit,” he told GQ.
“And it is self-evident that that is damaging to the reputation of the network, the corporation, and the news division. So it is unclear to me why anyone would do that other than to curry favor with a single individual.”
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If ending Colbert’s show was part of the deal to appease Trump, it sure seems to have worked.
“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” Trump wrote in a July 18 post on social media. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
(Disney dutifully axed Kimmel’s show two months later, only to revive it after a Disney boycott threatened the company’s core business.)
But none of that ultimately concerns Colbert, he said, noting he’s worked well with CBS and engaging in political speculation wouldn’t be fruitful.
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“I have had a great relationship with CBS. It’s one of the reasons why this was so surprising and so shocking that there was no preamble to this,” Colbert said. Underscoring the surprise: Colbert said the network executives didn’t tell him of its decision ― he heard it from his manager first.
Which isn’t to say he’s wrapped his head around it.
“No. No, no. Not at all. No,” he said. “I mean, I have accepted it. I’ve wrapped my head around that. But in terms of how I feel about it, no, I don’t know because the shows go on. I don’t necessarily know how I’ll feel about it until I’m not doing it anymore, because it’s all-consuming.”
