Censoring toward the Donald
By 
Donald Trump is celebrating CBS’s latest pathetic preemptive concession to the president, and why not:
Donald Trump is already lying about why CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was canceled.
“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
But the decision clearly had nothing to do with ratings.
In the second quarter of 2025, Late Show averaged 2.42 million viewers across 41 first-run episodes, according to Late Nighter, summoning a larger viewership than competitors in that time slot, including ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Meanwhile, Fox News’s Gutfeld did surpass Colbert during its earlier time slot, with an average viewership of 3.29 million people. But when considering the host’s penchant for racist and antisemitic drivel, there isn’t much to idolize there.
Colbert’s cancellation came just days after the host called out Paramount, CBS’s parent company, for agreeing to pay $16 million to the Trump administration to settle a lawsuit over an edited 60 Minutes interview of failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. It’s worth noting that Fox News has absolutely shredded taped interviews with the president in a desperate attempt to make him sound normal.
During his monologue, Colbert argued that Paramount knew the lawsuit was “completely without merit” but agreed to pay a “big fat bribe” to ease its sale to Skydance Media—a deal that needs approval from the president.
Relatedly, guess who the guy about to take over the Trump Network wants to be the face of CBS News:
Paramount’s owner-in-waiting, David Ellison, met with journalist entrepreneur Bari Weiss on Friday about a possible tie-up between CBS News and her startup The Free Press.
The pair met on the sidelines of an annual gathering of media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Ellison has been holding talks with Weiss in recent weeks as he awaits Trump administration approval of the pending merger between Paramount and his firm, Skydance Media.
Once the merger takes effect, Ellison will oversee Paramount, including its storied CBS News division.
Ellison has been tight-lipped about his vision for CBS, so his interest in The Free Press is a significant signal about his plans to invest in reporting and analysis.
Ellison is said to be interested in infusing Weiss’s editorial perspective into CBS News, as the media newsletter Status first reported last month. The New York Times reported on Skydance’s “early talks” to acquire The Free Press on Friday.
Weiss became something of a journalistic household name after she quit The Times in 2020 and blasted its “illiberal environment.” One year later, she had gained enough of a following on her Substack-hosted publication, originally named Common Sense, to start hiring a staff.
“White people just cannot catch a break in America,” she will say as she gets showered with money to turn CBS News into a store brand Fox News.
One of the biggest changes between Trump I and Trump II is the increase in anticipatory obedience from elite institutions, and in cases like this it’s more outright collaboration.