First they came for the comedians…

Steven Colbert’s long goodbye came to an end last night

We lost one of the nation’s funniest and most courageous, truthful critics of Donald Trump and his lawless, authoritarian regime.

Shame on you, CBS.

You will forever sport a black eye.

Our democracy will be the worse for it.

First they came for the comedians…

Colbert made us think.

He made us laugh.

Two things Donald Trump is incapable of.

“The legacy of this show needs to be that we remember it as the show that was canceled because a presidential administration wanted it off the air,” says Heather Hendershot, a professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University. “We haven’t connected every single dot on that, but it’s very clear that this was a political decision. And I think 20, 30, 40 years later, that is going to be strongly remembered about this show — that this was a moment of authoritarian triumph.”

First they came for the comedians…

When a network lays off America’s greatest satirists, it’s not because they failed. It is because they succeeded too loudly.

And Steven Colbert was a resounding success.

Satirists are necessary for the health of a society.

On his very first show as host of The Late Show in 2015, Colbert ripped into Donald Trump while gorging on Oreos, likening his inability to resist the cookies to his inability to resist going after the then-presidential candidate. Over the next 11 years, Colbert couldn’t curb his appetite for Trump barbs, and his show was a brilliant rebuke of MAGA and the Trump regime.

When CBS made the shocking announcement that the Late Show franchise would end in May 2026, they claimed it was purely a financial decision. No one was buying it.

It was the first warning shot in this age of Trump censorship.

Satirists were being put on notice.

When they silence an important voice, they silence us all.

First they came for the comedians…