How long will it be before Donald Trump calls for the “unconditional surrender” of America’s late-night hosts?
It’s bound to be coming.
Chalk it up to regime change—television style.
Once Paramount completes its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery—bringing HBO into its orbit—four of the biggest names in late night will effectively be working for a management, Paramount Global, and an owner, David Ellison, that Trump can comfortably call “loyal.”
One host, Stephen Colbert, has already experienced the fallout of regime change. His show was canceled shortly before Paramount’s deal to absorb CBS received approval from the administration—this, despite being the most-watched program in the post-11 p.m. hour.
The Daily Show on Comedy Central, still headlined by Jon Stewart, has been living under that same ownership. Somewhat surprisingly—given Stewart’s spectacular and spectacularly funny weekly eviscerations—the show has so far remained off Trump’s missile-launch radar.
So far.
Now John Oliver and Bill Maher, HBO’s two late-night stars, face the prospect of satirizing Donald Trump and his administration while working for a management team that almost surely owes its success in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery to Trump’s heavy influence.
Both hosts have taken note of their sudden vulnerability.
Maher has done more to cultivate a respectful relationship with Trump than any other late-night host not employed by the Trump-adoring Fox News network. But as the Real Time host acknowledged on his show this past Friday night, Trump has begun loudly demonizing him as just another victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” citing a fusillade of slams the president posted on Truth Social weeks ago and resurfaced late last week.
As for Oliver, he is hardly feeling secure despite having won enough Emmy Awards to build a protective ring around his studio.
“Not great news,” he said on Last Week Tonight of news of the Paramount takeover of his HBO home, before quipping “If I may quote anyone who’s ever accidentally sat on their Roku remote, ‘Oh shit, I’m in Paramount now, how the fuck do I get out of this?’”
That’s a fair question: How do any of these guys get out of this—out from whatever fate Trump might try to inflict through friends or allies in corporate ownership?
Given the level of talent involved, you might think their late-night careers are not really under threat. Surely the options for major comedy stars would be abundant.
Not so much.
Thanks to the deteriorating landscape of linear television—and Trump’s deep-rooted enmity toward just about the entire roster of late-night talent—those options are dwindling fast.
Take for example John Oliver, whose current contract for Last Week Tonight expires at the end of this year. Imagine for moment if Oliver were to choose to bolt rather staying on under Paramount ownership, or if (in a far less likely scenario) HBO were to cut ties with him—Colbert-style—before WBD closes its deal with Paramount.
In another era, Oliver might have looked to The Daily Show or Comedy Central as a refuge. Now the management would be the same—new place or old.
He couldn’t put his hand up for host of The Late Show after Colbert leaves either. Again, same management. And in that case, the management has killed the network’s entire late-night franchise anyway. Nobody else will be sitting in the chair once occupied by two legends, David Letterman and Stephen Colbert—no matter how many Emmy Awards they’ve won.
Maher would face a similar situation.
In his lengthy rebuttal to Trump’s recent attacks Friday night, Maher listed a few areas of agreement with the president that no other late-night host would share—like support for attacks on Venezuela and Iran.
But he spent far more time blasting Trump’s actions: selling pardons, enrichment deals for Trump’s family and friends, the “sadism and stupidity” of ICE, the “disaster” of DOGE, and what he bluntly labeled Trump’s racism, misogyny, and corruption.
Those are the lines Trump is far more likely to remember.
The bottom line is that Trump despises all of them—for unceasingly lambasting, lampooning, and laughing at him.
He has already weaponized the FCC under an especially servile chairman in an effort to get at hosts whose corporate owners—Comcast and Disney—he has not yet been able to intimidate into firing them.
Though he has publicly called for axing Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers—all of whom seem to have succeeded quite well despite having “no talent,” in Trump’s telling—there is nothing Trump can directly do about it.
That is, as long as their management holds up under the pressure.
But there are almost three full years of Trump left in office—and he’s nothing if not emboldened by the fall of the likes of Maduro and Khamenei.
And CBS.
And Paramount.
And HBO.
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Absolutely no sane American cares about Bill Maher, who is in reality, the loudmouthed jerk at the end of the bar!
No lies detected there!
Networks who bend the knee for Trump will have to contend with vanishing audiences. Look what happened to Disney with Kimmel, and the Washington Post. When Colbert is gone and if The Daily Show goes away, there’s not much left for me to watch on Paramount+. Where will the Trump-kissing networks be in 8 months after the midterms, or 32 months when MAGA finally gets tossed?
I’m not saying these folks have nothing to worry about – but I am saying that there are a lot of other paths people can take these days, including going out on their own on YouTube or any of the countless smaller streaming services that would love to be able to trumpet a big name like Colbert or Oliver out of nowhere.
Bottom line: As long as they want to do a show like this, I don’t think these folks are in danger of going away. Their audience will follow. And these networks will lose a lot of viewers who might not stick around for anything else they do.
That’s making a pretty solid assumption that Google won’t start blocking the same people for the same reason.
Who’s being blocked?
Still pretending like these AIPAC ZOGbots are independent thinkers. Those poor millionaires who nobody watches or even knows still exists.
“who nobody watches or even knows still exists.”
why do you want to come across so stupid, even anonymously?
as Iranian alle this people are Democrat
supporters and last 47 years how they have played media and all around world,
given mullah killing regime IRGC all the time and money and support for playing the time for do what they like. so
if this regime change happen all of this terrorism in middle East will be finished.
look like many of them going to be out of the job, because there is no one helping terrorism, plus England biggest supporter of mullah regime they are working together to kippe mullah killing regime IRGC at power.
First and foremost, although he is an undeserving nepo baby, Ellison Jr is first and foremost a businessman that wants to prove he is a great businessman.
The Ellison/Trump connection is purely of convenience. He answers to his Daddy and to shareholders. He just cannot run profitable businesses into the ground at the alleged behest of an 80 year old lame duck.