Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, gloated Tuesday morning over the abrupt cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night CBS show and gleefully mocked critics of the move.
“The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing,” Carr tweeted. “They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.”
Carr’s post came the morning after Colbert fired back at Donald Trump for celebrating that the comedian “got fired,” telling the president to “go f*** yourself” during a blistering monologue that also saw the host promise that “the gloves would be off” over his final 10 months on air.
On top of that, Carr’s mockery of Colbert and his defenders comes just days after the FCC chairman met with David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance Media and the son of pro-Trump billionaire Larry Ellison. According to a regulatory filing, Ellison urged Carr to finalize Skydance’s $8.4 billion merger with Paramount, the parent company of CBS that recently settled a “meritless” lawsuit with Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Carr’s tweet.
The meeting between Carr, Ellison and Ellison’s legal team took place two days before CBS announced that it was canceling Colbert’s show, which Paramount executives claimed was purely a “financial decision” due to the program’s hefty production costs and the dwindling ad revenues for late-night programming on linear television.
Asking Carr to “promptly grant” Paramount’s request to transfer control of its broadcast licenses to Skydance while highlighting “the public interest benefits” of the merger, Ellison’s team promised the FCC that CBS would be “unbiased” under the new corporate leadership.
“[W]e explained the Ellison family and RedBird represent fresh leadership with the vision and experience needed to drive New Paramount’s long-term growth in the face of the challenges presented by today’s media landscape, all while preserving and enhancing the legacy and broad reach of both the national CBS television network and the company’s 28 owned-and-operated local television stations,” Ellison’s attorney wrote in the filing.
“Relatedly, we discussed Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,” the lawyer added.
While it has been recently reported that Colbert’s show was losing as much as $40 million annually despite being the top-rated show in its time slot, prompting Colbert himself to call out his own network Monday night for leaking the data to justify the cancellation, CBS has been accused of appeasing the Trump administration with the “politically motivated” move. Especially since Colbert not only has long been critical of Trump, but has also repeatedly blasted Paramount’s decision to settle its lawsuit, likening it to bribery in order to grease the wheels of the merger.
The Writers Guild of America, which represents the writing staff of The Late Show, said it is concerned that the cancellation “is a bribe, sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration as the company looks for merger approval.”
CBS staffers also aren’t buying the company’s claims that Colbert’s show was canceled due to financial reasons. “Many of us think this was part and parcel of the Trump shakedown settlement,” one network employee told The Independent.
Meanwhile, several Democratic lawmakers who are already alleging the network is placating Trump with the cancellation have also pressed Ellison about the president’s claim that they reached a side deal on the lawsuit settlement. Trump has asserted that, besides the $16 million Paramount agreed to pay, Ellison promised as much as $19 million in pro-Trump advertisements on CBS once the merger is complete.
During Colbert’s broadcast on Monday night, several other late-night show hosts and celebrities appeared to show support for the CBS star, including The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, who is also rumored to possibly face cancellation amid the merger.
In his own passionate and profane monologue on Monday night, Stewart defended his longtime friend while acknowledging that he could soon be on the chopping block himself. At the same time, he called out Paramount for being fearful of Trump and his anti-media crusade.
“And if you believe as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavourless that you will never again be on the boy king’s radar,” Stewart proclaimed. “Why will anyone watch you? And – you are f***ing wrong.”
Carr, who serves as Trump’s own personal “attack dog” against the legacy media, has long been a fierce critic of the mainstream press and has opened or threatened several investigations into media companies over their news coverage.
Earlier this spring, Carr said “all options remain on the table” in his agency’s ongoing “news distortion” probe of CBS News over the 60 Minutes interview behind the president’s lawsuit. Months later, Paramount would reach its settlement with the president.
Meanwhile, Carr’s tweet prompted centrist pundit Matthew Yglesias to note that the FCC chief “should clear the air” over whether The Late Show’s cancellation is playing a factor in his decision to approve the Paramount-Skydance deal.
“I think the fact that it’s been widely reported in the business press that Paramount believes settling lawsuits with Trump is key to winning merger approval from your agency is influencing some people’s understanding of the Colbert situation,” Yglesias wrote, leading Carr to react with a wind blowing face emoji.
