Rachel Maddow called on CBS and parent company Paramount to reverse its decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Monday, saying that the new norm at the network since the Paramount-Skydance merger has been “a huge embarrassment.”
“Maybe you can now see where in history you’re going to end up, and now’s your chance to try to alter that and try to get right,” the MS NOW host said on colleague Nicolle Wallace’s “The Best People” podcast. “And I think that a lot of institutions are in that same boat.”
Commenting on the widespread corporate “capitulation” to President Donald Trump over the last year, Maddow pointed directly to Colbert’s July dismissal and the “Trump-connected oligarchs” now running Paramount behind the decision.
“It was absolutely transparent what CBS and Paramount were doing with getting rid of Stephen Colbert. ‘Oh, it’s a financial decision.’ Right, because having the highest-rated late night show in America for years is somehow financially unsustainable now when it wasn’t before?” Maddow railed, getting an additional jab in at newly appointed CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss. “At the same time that you’ve got Trump-connected oligarchs taking over this company and putting a right-wing blogger in charge of CBS News.”
The final “Late Show” episode with Colbert is currently scheduled to air in May 2026, but Maddow argued it’s not too late to change course.
“They announced the cancellation of Colbert — everybody knows what it’s about,” she continued. “They’re trying to sort of live down their shame already, and I think in terms of the way they are capitulating, the CBS News takeover has been a huge embarrassment to everybody involved in it. And, you know, they should reverse the decision about Colbert. He’s still on the air now, he’s still got a few months on the horizon left before they plan on taking him off the air. They should change that.”
Maddow emphasized that Trump’s “-24 in terms of his approval rating” based on the latest Gallup poll, and that since the July announcement of the “Late Show” cancellation, the president’s rhetoric — not to mention his ongoing “war crimes that are so obvious in a non-war that we’re in in the Caribbean” — has only gotten worse.
“So that’s what’s happened, CBS — that’s what’s happened, Paramount, since you decided that you would try to please Donald Trump by taking Stephen Colbert off the air. Like, maybe don’t do that,” she said.
Watch Maddow’s full “The Best People” interview in the video above.
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