The final episode of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ represents not just the end of Colbert’s career, but the final nail in the coffin of the ‘Orange Man Bad’ activist comedy of the early Trump years.
After an 11-year run, the final episode of ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ airs on Thursday night. Riding a wave of liberal anguish over the election of President Donald Trump in 2017, Colbert’s highly partisan brand of comedy garnered massive ratings, but as seasons went by and Colbert ditched laughs for naked propaganda, the schtick wore thin and the show’s cancellation was announced by CBS last summer.
CBS cited declining ad revenue and changing viewer habits as reasons for the decision, but in an ironic twist of fate, Colbert also fell victim to the same partisanship that he stoked every weeknight on CBS. The announcement came after CBS’ parent company, Paramount, merged with Skydance Media and paid a $16 million defamation settlement to Trump. Skydance CEO David Ellison’s family are close friends of the president, and with another Trump supporter – Bari Weiss – installed as head of CBS News, the writing was likely on the wall for Colbert the moment the deal was signed.
Looking back at some of Colbert’s ‘highlights’, however, it’s clear that the laughs died long beforehand.
Colbert’s Russiagate romance
Colbert’s ratings took off following Trump’s first election win, with his show becoming the highest-rated late-night talk show for the 2016–2017 season. The ‘Russiagate’ hoax was gaining traction at the time, and to liberal audiences seeking validation for their conspiracy theories, The Late Show became “the home for reasoned, but incisive, discussion, on the perceived overreaches of the White House,” critic David Sims wrote in The Atlantic.
In reality, audiences were treated to nightly tirades about “collusion,” “Russian interference,” and in one infamous monologue, a tale of gay romance between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The only thing your mouth is good for,” he addressed Trump, “is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”
Colbert’s audience cheered on command, but what Sims called “reasoned discussion,” all but the most die-hard Russiagate believers saw as seething Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Homophobia for the right cause, with the right targets, is good homophobia, apparently,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said in response.
Don’t cheer!
Colbert’s job wasn’t just to make his audience laugh – it was to tell them what to think. Minutes after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, Colbert broke the news to his studio audience during his opening monologue. The audience erupted in cheers, presumably because liberals at the time believed that Comey’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email servers cost her the election the year before.
Taken aback, Colbert corrected the crowd, telling them that Comey is “investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia,” and his firing was actually a bad thing. They immediately switched to boos.
In another off-script moment in 2024, the studio audience erupted in laughter when Colbert praised CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins for “just report[ing] the news as it is.”
“Is that supposed to be a laugh line?” Collins responded. “It wasn’t supposed to be,” Colbert replied.
The Vax-scene
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Colbert switched tack, becoming an enthusiastic promoter of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Laid off workers protesting the lockdowns were described as “a handful of idiots,” and vaccine mandates, he declared, had “a proud patriotic history in this country.” However, the nadir of Colbert’s vaccine evangelism came in 2021 when he introduced a recurring and now famously unfunny segment to the show: “the vax-scene.”
The segment, in which a grinning Colbert danced with showgirls dressed as hypodermic needles, has been described as “cringe,” “dystopian,” and “propaganda,” although it would not be the last Covid-related cringefest featuring Colbert. Two months after the first ‘vax-scene’ clip aired, Colbert was filmed dancing with New York Senator Chuck Schumer in Central Park at an event “celebrating the resilience of New York City” amid the pandemic.
Regime-approved comedy
Colbert’s dance-off with Schumer illustrated his hand-in-hand relationship with the Democratic Party, as did his roster of guests, which included liberal journalists, anti-Trump comics such as John Oliver and Jon Stewart, and government officials like Comey, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. After campaigning for Joe Biden in 2020, Colbert opened a bottle of champagne when the election results came in and, with tears in his eyes, declared that “finally, after four years, Americans can exhale.”
Biden’s officials were regular guests over the next four years, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken selling the audience on the necessity of backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Covid czar Anthony Fauci made three appearances to push vaccines, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power discussed the Biden administration’s efforts to promote “democracy” around the world.
Trump was out of office, but Colbert doubled down on the partisanship. Ratings slid, and in a sign of the times in mid-2022, the Late Show was overtaken by Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld – a supporter of Trump and the most popular late night host of the Biden years.
“Colbert took a long-running institution and destroyed it with his own personal politics,” Gutfeld said on Tuesday. “The main issue with Colbert and his ilk is that they were kiss-asses who weren’t even trying to be funny. He did nothing but safe comedy, ridiculing the approved targets his team hated.”
So close was this relationship that Democrat Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff demanded that CBS be investigated, to determine whether Colbert “was canceled for political reasons.” Both had been guests on the Late Show.
A victory for Trump
Trump has refused to take credit for Colbert’s cancellation, but the president has reveled in the demise of the Late Show. “Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, Late Night. That is not true! The reason he was fired was a pure lack of TALENT,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform last year. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said that he would share more thoughts on Colbert “at a later date.”
Trump has also called for the firing of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC and Seth Meyers from NBC, both of whom have spent the last decade mocking him.
However, even without intervention from the president, the future looks bleak for Kimmel, Meyers, and fellow late-night liberal Jimmy Fallon. Along with Colbert, all three have watched their ratings tumble over the last decade, with Kimmel and Fallon both pulling in just over half of the viewers that they did in 2015.
Ultimately, audiences are growing tired of the same old ‘Orange Man Bad’ routine, and getting sick of being told what to think. Colbert may be the first big name to fall, but he almost certainly won’t be the last.