Trump Declares ‘Victory’ as Colbert’s Exit Lands as Martyrdom

Trump’s “Victory” – President Donald Trump celebrated Stephen Colbert’s final “Late Show” as a win on Truth Social after CBS canceled the program under new ownership. But the shutdown has drawn a different reading: that Colbert’s forced departure turns him into a larger cultural

When Stephen Colbert walked out after the final episode of “The Late Show,” President Donald Trump did not wait long to turn the moment into something else entirely.

On Thursday. as Republicans fled Washington to avoid voting for Trump’s ballroom money or dealing with his $1.8 billion slush fund. the president posted a victory lap on Truth Social. “Colbert is finally finished at CBS,” Trump wrote after the last show ended. He added: “Amazing that he lasted so long!. No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person.”.

To Trump, it was the payoff for years of taking aim at one of his most relentless public critics. But Colbert’s firing is not being widely treated as a win for the president. For many viewers. it lands as something more durable than a simple cancellation: a martyr for a media fight that has increasingly come to define Trump’s politics.

Colbert has spent decades as one of the most popular late-night hosts in the country and a fixture of American media. His cultural standing is exactly the sort of cachet Trump appears to crave—high ratings. strong jokes. and a finale that. by all accounts. felt like a real event rather than a routine sendoff. The last show, with star guests and genuine moments, included Paul McCartney reflecting on the Beatles’ debut on U.S. television.

Colbert also spent years roasting the president, but his final episode saved most of its barbs for his parent company, CBS. In that closing stretch, he did not even mention the president by name.

That choice matters, because Trump’s instincts are different. The president’s relationship with ridicule has never looked patient. He is. by the account laid out by Colbert’s defenders. someone who craves admiration and cannot handle being laughed at—especially while watching his approval ratings drop and allies awkwardly look for an exit.

Colbert’s departure also threatens something Trump’s team has been trying to protect: the ability to rewrite reality. Since returning to office on a promise of revenge and retribution. Trump has pushed to silence critics through executive orders. investigations. criminal prosecutions. regulatory oversight—and. in Colbert’s case. through billionaire mergers and acquisitions.

The end of “The Late Show” traces back to the Ellison family’s deal for Paramount. the parent company of CBS. The program. launched by David Letterman in 1993. was canceled after Paramount’s purchase of CBS by the Trumpy billionaire father-and-son duo Larry and David Ellison. It has long been suspected—though never confirmed—that the cancellation. along with a $16 million settlement paid by Paramount to the Trump administration. was part of the bargain to get the Ellisons’ purchase approved by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.

CBS has said the cancellation was purely for financial reasons. The article notes that the answer may never be known. But it points to how Colbert characterized the settlement, saying it “sure looks like a ‘big fat bribe.’”

To Colbert, that kind of blunt realism has always been part of the job. It also connects to a theme that he helped coin early in his career. On the first episode of “The Colbert Report. ” Colbert’s satirical Bill O’Reilly persona created the term “truthiness”—a description of how the George W. Bush administration’s approach prioritized emotion and gut instinct as truth over actual truth.

At the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Colbert delivered the idea in his own voice, saying, “Every night on my show, ‘The Colbert Report,’ I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument.”

In 2006, the satirical critique fit the moment: Bush’s lies tried to reframe reality. Now, the argument goes, Trump’s lies aim to become reality itself. Trump has taken “truthiness” to a new level. not even seeking the veneer of truth behind demonstrably false claims—about the 2020 election. about the war in Iran. about the economy. and about whatever feels convenient at the time.

For Trump and his supporters, the lie becomes their truth. And those who contradict it must be silenced. That’s why the president is said to have wanted Colbert off the air.

The pattern, as described here, extends beyond CBS. Trump is linked to efforts that tried—and in at least one case failed—to silence Jimmy Kimmel. He is also pressuring ABC to cancel “The View,” a mainstream platform that criticizes him to a broad audience and often does so with jokes.

For Trump, jokes are not harmless. They sting, sometimes more than editorial pages ever could.

Bruce Springsteen said it plainly on “The Late Show” on Wednesday: “You’re the first guy in America who lost his show because we’ve got a president who can’t take a joke.”

The article also situates Colbert’s experience in a longer history. Colbert isn’t the first person to lose a television job over political pressure or what people believed he said. The early 20th-century Red Scare and the McCarthy Era produced job losses. including among entertainers and artists on the Hollywood Blacklist. tied to suspected links to Communists or anarchism.

But those campaigns grew out of an atmosphere of fear and distrust in broader society. At that time, American capitalism—so the piece argues—worried about cultural competition and treated dissent as a threat. That enthusiasm faded in the end.

What’s different now is the scale of the imbalance. Trump’s MAGArthyism is described as neither popular nor persuasive. and his presidency as increasingly unpopular—while his approval ratings are tanking and his agenda faces resistance. Against that backdrop. the piece argues. Trump has used autocratic measures to slam the door on opposition—especially when the opposition is. in some respects. more popular than the president.

Colbert’s finale offered a final word that sounded almost like a refusal to hand Trump the last narrative.

“I think I get it now. It looks like the end. And I wish it wasn’t, but that’s not for me to decide,” Colbert said in his finale. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

In the end, the message Colbert carries—about truth, even in the presence of “rabid truthiness”—is expected to travel with him. The piece closes on an expectation that wherever Colbert goes next, it will likely still be funny.

Donald Trump Truth Social Stephen Colbert The Late Show CBS Paramount Ellison Larry Ellison David Ellison Federal Communications Commission $16 million settlement Jimmy Kimmel The View MAGA