{"id":474339,"date":"2026-02-17T18:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474339\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T18:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:56:07","slug":"stephen-colbert-blasts-cbs-for-nixing-james-talarico-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474339\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert blasts CBS for nixing James Talarico interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night host Stephen Colbert accused his network, CBS, of refusing to broadcast his interview with Texas Rep. James Talarico<\/a>, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, during Monday night\u2019s airing of \u201cThe Late Show\u201d for fear of running afoul of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Colbert said CBS canceled Talarico\u2019s appearance on air in light of guidance issued Jan. 21<\/a> by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, which directed<\/a> daytime and late-night TV talk show hosts to offer equal airtime to all political candidates running for a given office. Talk shows have long been exempted from these \u201cequal time\u201d rules when conducting \u201cbona fide news interviews,\u201d allowing them to book political candidates without bringing on their opponents.<\/p>\n

Talarico \u201cwas supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network\u2019s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,\u201d Colbert said in a segment explaining the cancelation<\/a>. \u201cThen I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn\u2019t want us to talk about this, let\u2019s talk about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interview was set to air on Monday night\u2019s show the day before the start of early voting for Texas\u2019 March 3 primaries. Talarico is vying for the Senate Democratic nomination against U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett<\/a> of Dallas.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged<\/a> the FCC, which approves mergers in the media and telecommunications industry, to crack down on American broadcasters. In his letter, Carr wrote that \u201cprogramming motivated by partisan purposes\u201d should comply with the equal time rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just call this what it is: Donald Trump\u2019s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV, OK?\u201d Colbert said. He added that Carr merely said in the Jan. 21 guidance that he was considering dropping the exemption for talk shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe hasn\u2019t done away with it yet, but my network is unilaterally enforcing it as if he had,\u201d Colbert said. <\/p>\n

The White House referred questions to the FCC. CBS and the FCC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CBS is ending Colbert\u2019s show<\/a> in May, a decision announced in July just days after Colbert criticized the network\u2019s parent company, Paramount, for a $16 million settlement it reached with Trump after the president sued the company for how it edited a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Paramount, which needed FCC approval of its sale to Skydance Media at the time, said the cancelation was \u201ca purely financial decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the interview<\/a>, which was posted on YouTube, Talarico called the guidance by the Trump administration and the decision by CBS to preemptively comply as a \u201cthreat to all of our First Amendment rights.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump is worried that we\u2019re about to flip Texas,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cThis is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they\u2019re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture \u2014 the kind that comes from the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico noted that the FCC opened an investigation<\/a> into ABC\u2019s \u201cThe View\u201d after he sat for an interview this month, casting it as part of a pattern of government overreach dating back to when the agency \u201cwent after\u201d Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel\u2019s show was briefly suspended by ABC in September after the FCC threatened the network.<\/p>\n

Talarico added that CBS canceled Colbert\u2019s show after the late-night host told \u201cthe truth about Paramount\u2019s bribe to Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCorporate media executives are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians, and a threat to any of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The interview also covered Talarico\u2019s Christian faith, Democratic hopes of retaking Texas this year and recent blowback Talarico faced for allegedly referring<\/a> to Colin Allred, a former Dallas congressman and Democratic Senate candidate, as a \u201cmediocre Black man.\u201d Talarico said he called Allred\u2019s campaigning mediocre but \u201cwould never attack him on the basis of race.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night host Stephen Colbert accused his network, CBS, of refusing to broadcast his interview with Texas Rep. James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[164749,1340,12,1070,88,69123,92,3079],"class_list":{"0":"post-474339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-2026-elections","9":"tag-congress","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-james-talarico","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-u-s-senate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}