{"id":224681,"date":"2026-01-03T05:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T05:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224681\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T05:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T05:19:07","slug":"stephen-colberts-big-life-lesson-for-2026-dont-trust-billionaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224681\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert’s big life lesson for 2026: “Don’t trust billionaires”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we shake the dust of 2025 off our boots, we have to ask ourselves: What did we learn from that confusing clusterfuck of a year?<\/a> What lessons can be derived from those chaotic twelve months, so that the whole messy ordeal isn\u2019t just written off as a perplexing, pointless quagmire? It\u2019s a massive question, big enough that we can hopefully be excused for turning to our TV luminaries to help draw a bit of advice, maybe even a life lesson, from the wreckage. Hey, Stephen Colbert, what did 2025 teach you?<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t trust billionaires.\u201d That was how the still-there-for-now CBS host<\/a> kicked off the year, drawing headlines for his cheerful response when a typically soused Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen asked him a few nights ago\u2014amidst their usual New Year\u2019s Eve duties for CNN\u2014what he\u2019d learned from a year that saw him suddenly on the verge of losing his late night show. \u201cThey don\u2019t get rich by finding that money on the side of the road, brother!\u201d<\/p>\n

Colbert managed to end up having arguably the\u00a0second-worst 2025 in late night TV, by dint of not actually being dragged off the air for a week<\/a> by affiliate owners whipped into a frenzy by the FCC. But he\u2019s still set to lose the\u00a0Late Show\u00a0pulpit that\u2019s been his TV home for a decade at this point, after CBS abruptly announced it\u2019d be canceling his series at the end of its 2025-2026 season. A lot\u00a0of people have asked if the decision wasn\u2019t related to Colbert\u2019s years-long criticism of the Trump administration in general\u2014and Paramount\u2019s willingness to give them a lot of money to make pesky lawsuits go away amidst the heated frenzy of merger season in specific\u2014even as the network swore it was strictly a financial decision. Colbert, who tends to come off pretty even-keeled when he\u2019s not playing up his personas, has said in interviews<\/a> that he doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s \u201cfruitful\u201d to vent his feelings about any of it in public.<\/p>\n

But, hey, you can\u2019t\u00a0always\u00a0be fruitful, right? There\u2019s some real cathartic joy in watching Colbert (obliquely) lay into any Redstones, Ellisons, or other oligarchs who might be listening, cheerfully laughing with Cohen and Cooper as he reminds viewers not to trust the billionaire class. If nothing else, it\u2019s a pretty solid mantra to internalize, bringing it forward into whatever new\u00a0clusterfuck 2026 is sure to contain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As we shake the dust of 2025 off our boots, we have to ask ourselves: What did we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-224681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}