If The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was aiming to provoke Donald Trump by rerunning a monologue focused on his hosting of The Kennedy Center Honors shortly after the ceremony finished airing on CBS, the strategy paid off early Wednesday, when the president—apparently watching—lashed out at the host on social media in real time.
“Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success,” Trump wrote in the first of a series of early-morning messages.
“Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings,” he continued. “Stephen is running on hatred and fumes ~ A dead man walking! CBS should ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!”
Trump’s comments came minutes after the conclusion of Colbert’s monologue, which originally aired December 8, the night after Trump hosted the pre-taped Kennedy Center Honors. Colbert’s monologue included several pointed remarks about Trump’s insistence on being the center of attention—not just at the awards show, but days earlier at a 2026 World Cup event, where he was presented with FIFA’s first-ever Peace Prize.
Trump posted again several minutes later, this time widening his focus to late-night hosts across the broadcast networks. “Who has the worst Late Night host, CBS, ABC, or NBC???” he asked. “They all have three things in common: High Salaries, No Talent, REALLY LOW RATINGS!”
He then returned to a familiar threat, writing, “If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!”
Perhaps recognizing the hour—it was now after midnight—Trump capped off the sequence with one final message: “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”
For those who’ve followed Trump’s escalating war with late-night television this year, the episode felt like a fitting coda. It came months after CBS confirmed the cancellation of The Late Show, and amid a broader climate in which Trump has increasingly blurred the line between rhetorical attacks on comedians and pressure on the companies that employ them—most notably when Jimmy Kimmel Live! was briefly pulled off the air after Trump’s FCC Chair publicly suggested ABC’s affiliates stop airing his show.
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This is what a real president had to say about criticism:
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
🙂
I hope he just keeps ramping it up, what has he got to lose.
Go Stephen Go! All aspiring tyrants need to be taken down.
Pure projection on DJT’s part. He is the one full of hatred, who lacks talent, and has low ratings. (Look at his poll numbers)
Colbert is a national treasure!
If YOU “think” so.
You would never have voted for Drumpf if you used that pebble you have for a brain!
What else can one expect when a group of antagonists start in on each other. In the End, Stephen lost as his show was canceled.
Stephen Colbert on DJT — on-air — from earlier in the year:
“not just a sack of incompetence and malice, he’s also very thin-skinned,”
and,
“Trumpcession … (in 2020]) it took a disease to destroy the economy … this time, he is the disease.”
Hey, it’s Colbert. Who am I to disagree?
I stand with Colbert. Bigly so.