{"id":665607,"date":"2026-05-26T07:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T07:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665607\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T07:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T07:27:08","slug":"trump-was-personally-involved-in-canceling-stephen-colbert-longtime-late-night-reporter-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665607\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump was ‘personally involved’ in canceling Stephen Colbert, longtime late night reporter claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longtime reporter Bill Carter claimed President Donald Trump was \u201cpersonally involved\u201d in having\u00a0Stephen Colbert\u2019s show canceled<\/a>\u00a0based on Trump\u2019s response to the series finale.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a good development for the country, obviously,\u201d Carter said on MS Now\u2019s \u201cThe Weekend\u201d on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly the idea that he throws a man in the dumpster at the end of it indicates that he was personally involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter was referring to an AI-generated video posted on\u00a0Trump\u2019s official X account\u00a0which featured Trump grabbing Colbert while on his show and throwing him into a large dumpster<\/a>, dancing to the Village People\u2019s \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d after the act.<\/p>\n

Carter, who wrote the book \u201cThe Late Shift\u201d based on former \u201cLate Show\u201d host David Letterman\u2019s feud with \u201cTonight Show\u201d host Jay Leno, was\u00a0among several commentators\u00a0who believed Trump\u2019s ongoing feud with Colbert was a factor in the show\u2019s end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Longtime reporter Bill Carter claimed President Donald Trump was \u201cpersonally involved\u201d in having Stephen Colbert\u2019s show canceled based on Trump\u2019s response to the series finale. FOX News<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government was pushing to get rid of this man because he was a critic. And, you know, that is so alien to our values that I think most Americans \u2014 even people who are kind of neutral about it, maybe not his strong supporters \u2014 know this is not something we do. We don\u2019t do that. We don\u2019t shut people up because they criticize us. And I think everybody who has a sense of that realizes this was a bad situation that we are going to have to deal with on an ongoing basis,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

He went on to accuse CBS of capitulating to the Trump administration, claiming that most people no longer believe that the network\u2019s decision to cancel the show was based on \u201cfinancial purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump delivers remarks during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on May 25, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, on Thursday, May 21, 2026. Scott Kowalchyk \/CBS<\/p>\n

\u201cI think CBS, when they capitulated in the lawsuit that Trump filed against \u201860 Minutes,\u2019 was sending a signal that they\u2019re not going to be the independent journalism outfit that they should be. And not just giving up Colbert, but wiping out the time period, they basically said, we\u2019re not even the same business anymore. We\u2019re backing away. We\u2019re giving up on this because maybe it would be too hard to hire somebody who wasn\u2019t going to make jokes about the president,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital\u00a0reached out to the White House for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d aired its final episode on May 21. CBS announced the show\u2019s cancellation last summer citing financial issues, a claim Colbert frequently denied. However, it was reported at the time that \u201cThe Late Show\u201d was losing the network a\u00a0whopping $40 million\u00a0per year.<\/p>\n

Colbert\u00a0frequently targeted Trump\u00a0in the final years of his show. A study from the Media Research Center found that Colbert made 3,639 jokes about President Donald Trump from Jan. 3, 2023, to his show\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Fox News\u2019 Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime reporter Bill Carter claimed President Donald Trump was \u201cpersonally involved\u201d in having\u00a0Stephen Colbert\u2019s show canceled\u00a0based on Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[991,12,88,13728,10815,10674,92],"class_list":["post-665607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cbs","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-media","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665607","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=665607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}