“Go f*ck yourself!”
That’s what Stephen Colbert told President Donald Trump on the latest episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in a biting response to Trump celebrating the show’s cancellation.
On 17 July, Colbert announced to a live studio audience (and fans across the globe) that The Late Show would not be returning for another season. “Before we start the show, I want you to know something that I found out just last night,” he said during his opening monologue. “Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May.”
CBS, in a statement, explained that the decision to end the show was purely “financial.”
After the announcement, Trump took to Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, to write, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.”
But if we’ve learnt anything about Colbert in the last ten years, it’s that he won’t go out without making some noise. In the first episode since the cancellation announcement, he said the “gloves are off” for the remaining ten months. “I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump, starting right now.”
He went on to put up an elaborate show featuring cameos, pop culture references, biting satire and raw emotion. Fellow late night hosts Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart and John Oliver—whom Trump dubbed as the “untalented Late Night Sweepstakes”—came out in solidarity, paying homage to their “martyr”.
And then came the highlight of the episode—a parody of the infamous ColdplayGate moment that broke the internet. As Lin Manuel Miranda and Weird Al Yankovic performed Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, the camera panned over a star-studded audience including Adam Sandler, Andy Cohen and CNN’s Anderson Cooper. But the kicker was when it landed on an animated Donald Trump embracing the Paramount logo, in the same fashion we saw in the viral clip.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been a top performer in late-night television, leading the ratings for nine straight seasons. Some people, including Colbert, speculate that the decision to axe the show—which was openly critical of Trump’s politics—is a result of Paramount settling a lawsuit with Trump for USD 16 million.
While he was remorseful about the show’s cancellation, Colbert was gracious towards the network. “It is a fantastic job,” he told his audience. “I wish somebody else was getting it.”
This marks the end of The Late Show’s 33-year-long run—22 under David Letterman and 11 under Colbert.
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