Until last week, Stephen Colbert was a fairly innocuous fixture in American media, a late-night host who’d sanded down his edges as he assumed what was once one of the most coveted slots on television.
Now, after CBS announced the end of his show, which came as its parent company, Paramount, pursues a merger that requires government approval, some progressive Democrats are taking up his cause as their own.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut warned in a video posted to social media that the ouster of a prominent Trump critic like Colbert showed that the country was “entering a censorship state.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted that the country “deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.” She later added that the corporate maneuvers and settlements swirling ahead of the potential merger “could be bribery in plain sight.”
“We have to speak out critically of those who capitulate,” said Senator Adam Schiff of California, in an 11-minute video he posted to X (in which he humble-bragged that he’d learned of the firing earlier than most because he’d been a guest on the show when Colbert announced it).
The Democratic caucus, though, is far from agreed on whether voters really care.
Over the last six months, as President Trump has rammed his agenda through Congress and bulldozed parts of the federal government, Democrats have struggled to home in on a single message. Polling suggests that they’ve made inroads in casting the president’s signature domestic policy bill as a giveaway for the rich at the expense of regular Americans. And they’ve spent much of the last couple of weeks seeking to exacerbate Republican divisions over Trump’s handling of the government’s files relating to Jeffrey Epstein.
Not everybody’s sure they should add Colbert — a well-compensated denizen of a dying medium — to their plate.
“You’re using the power of the government to try to control the press, which is kind of fundamental and people shouldn’t forget that, but that’s for the 1.5 percent,” James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist, told me. Of Colbert, he added, “He’s not a very sympathetic person in all of this.”
I heard similar doubts repeated by Democrats across Capitol Hill today. One aide to a House Democrat who represents a battleground district told me that the criticism sounded like an awfully boomer-centric concern at a time when the party needed to stop its bleeding among young people.
When I asked Senator Chris Coons of Delaware if he thought it made sense for his party to keep talking about Colbert, he rolled his eyes.
“Compared to what? Like, millions of people losing health care?” he said, steering our conversation back to Trump’s domestic policy bill.
“I love Stephen Colbert, and his show is very funny,” Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota told me. “And I also think that what happens with the Colbert show is not like the most salient issue for most voters right now.”
Some Republicans, for their part, have pounced on Democrats.
“The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing,” Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote on X on Tuesday. “They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.” (Democrats have accused Carr of politicizing the F.C.C., and he has suggested that a complaint over CBS’s editing of a “60 Minutes” episode will factor into his review of the merger.)
Still, progressives are determined to use the tale of Colbert to illustrate a broader point about the way Trump is governing.
“When Stephen Colbert tells jokes at the expense of Donald Trump and, three days later, has a show canceled, and Donald Trump crows about it, the people all across the country think something doesn’t smell right,” Warren told me. “They may not have followed every twist and turn in the settlements or demands, but they understand that this president is using raw power in a way that may be standard in communist countries, but never in America.”
Murphy agreed. “I think people jealously guard their First Amendment rights,” he said, adding, “I think people will recognize this as a pretty exceptional, pretty dangerous moment,” he said.
IN HIS WORDS
Look over here
Trump’s Epstein problem doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and he is reaching back nearly a decade for decoys that might distract his angry base. My colleague Minho Kim explains his latest attempt.
On Wednesday, Trump reposted a dubious claim from his top intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, asserting that high-ranking officials in the Obama administration had engaged in a “seditious conspiracy” and “manufactured” an intelligence report that concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in hopes of propelling Trump to victory.
In her post, Gabbard had argued that those officials “conspired to subvert the will of the American people” by promoting “Russia hoax lies,” mirroring language that Trump has long favored.
On Wednesday, Gabbard released an old report from the House Intelligence Committee, written when Republicans controlled the panel, that she said proved that the Obama administration had fabricated its findings. But the report did not dispute that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election, aiming to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Trump’s targeting of old enemies is what many people in Washington expected his retribution campaign to look like, my colleague Michael Schmidt reports — and the president now has aides and allies who appear willing to carry it out.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump effusively praised Gabbard for her faithfully partisan efforts, calling her “the hottest person in the room.”
“Tulsi, great job,” he said. “I know you have a lot more coming.”
by the numbers
Republican split over Trump’s handling of Epstein files
The Trump administration’s recent decision to backtrack on releasing new details about the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein has prompted something exceedingly rare: Republican voters have begun to express frustration with the president. My colleague Ruth Igielnik explains.
Trump has long engendered unwavering loyalty from his followers, who tend to shrug off even his most extreme controversies.
But recent public polling suggests even such fervent support may have a limit. While 40 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the release of the files on Epstein, more than a third of them — 36 percent — disapprove, according to a poll from Quinnipiac University.
Overall, nearly two-thirds of Americans overall disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of the case, according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Indeed, the Epstein files have led to one of the most unified moments in recent political history. According to recent polling from CBS News and YouGov, nearly 90 percent of Americans — including 83 percent of Republicans — think the Justice Department should release all the information it has regarding the case against Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on charges that he had sex-trafficked teenage girls.
These polls were conducted largely before an article in The Wall Street Journal detailed a risqué drawing that Trump was said to have sent Epstein decades ago, which seemed to quell the uprising within the president’s base.
Still, early indications from the surveys suggest the divide within the Republican Party may not further dampen Trump’s approval ratings.
Ruth Igielnik, Minho Kim and Jacob Reber contributed to this newsletter.
Jess Bidgood is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the On Politics newsletter, a guide to how President Trump is changing Washington, the country and its politics.
The post Do Democrats Want a Fight Over Colbert? appeared first on New York Times.
