Stephen Colbert’s last show airs May 21, nearly a year after CBS announced The Late Show would end. Back in July 2025, Donald Trump celebrated the cancellation on Truth Social with a sentence that read less like a joke than a warning to every late-night host still on the air.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.“
That was not exactly subtle. And even then, Kimmel was already in the middle of his own pressure campaign.
Kimmel Got the Sequel
Three days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Kimmel made a joke on his show. Looking into the camera, he said: “Our first lady Melania is here. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.”
The joke aired before an armed suspect was accused of trying to attack the dinner. Melania Trump called Kimmel’s remarks “hateful and violent” on X and urged ABC to act.
Trump followed by demanding that Kimmel be fired. In a separate Newsmax interview, he warned that “ABC is putting themselves in great jeopardy” by keeping Kimmel on air.
Then the FCC, led by Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr, accelerated the review of Disney’s eight ABC-owned station licenses. Those licenses were not scheduled for review until 2028. The FCC has not revoked a broadcast license in more than 40 years, which is why the timing did not read like routine paperwork. Democratic senators called the early review an “abuse of power” and asked Carr to explain whether he had communicated with White House officials beforehand. Carr has denied the move was retaliation, and Disney has said it complies with FCC regulations and is prepared to defend itself.
Kimmel is still on air. But the message to ABC was not exactly subtle either.
The Colbert Timeline Still Stinks
CBS announced in July 2025 that The Late Show would end in May 2026. The official explanation was financial. The timeline made that explanation harder to swallow.
On a Monday, Colbert called Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over a 60 Minutes interview a “big fat bribe.” That Thursday, CBS announced the show was ending. Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was seeking federal approval for its Skydance merger at the same time. The merger was later approved. Trump celebrated Colbert’s cancellation on Truth Social.
David Letterman, who built The Late Show and handed it to Colbert in 2015, did not buy the financial explanation. In his telling, CBS’s owners wanted to make the Skydance sale easier and threw Colbert’s show into the bargain. Then he gave the cleaner version: “They’re lying. They’re lying weasels.”
CBS called it a financial decision. Letterman called it what it looked like to him. The merger got approved either way.
Anna Gomez Put It in Writing
On Monday, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the three-member commission, wrote a letter to Disney CEO Bob Iger that deserves to be read slowly.
“What Disney and ABC are facing is not a series of coincidental regulatory actions but a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control,” Gomez wrote. She accused the FCC of weaponizing its authority to pressure the press and media “into submission.”
Then came the line Disney executives should probably tape to the conference room wall: “You are not the first target of this campaign, and you will not be the last.”
The first target. The not-last target. Colbert. Kimmel. The pattern that a sitting government commissioner is now describing in writing.
Colbert Had One Answer for Trump
When Colbert returned to his show after Trump celebrated the cancellation on Truth Social, he addressed the president directly.
“How dare you, sir,” Colbert said during his monologue. Then he offered a more compact review of Trump’s post: “Go f*** yourself.”
His final show airs May 21. In the run-up, fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver are appearing with him. David Letterman is also scheduled to return to the show he created. Tom Hanks, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Pedro Pascal, and other stars are part of the farewell run.
Kimmel, meanwhile, is making his own gesture. His ABC show will air a rerun during Colbert’s finale so he does not compete against the last Late Show broadcast. That is solidarity. It is also a reminder that late-night hosts understand exactly what Colbert’s exit represents. They are not watching a colleague retire. They are watching a franchise disappear after its host mocked Trump’s settlement.
Trump said Kimmel is next. A government commissioner says the campaign will not stop with Disney.
Colbert is leaving. Kimmel is still on air.
For now.