🗣️ Don't make Colbert a free speech martyr

The FCC being wrong doesn’t make Colbert righteous

I distinctly remember Stephen Colbert skewering President Bush during his 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech. I was a high school kid in one of the most conservative areas of the country—West Texas. We loved George W. Bush. I had his campaign bumper sticker on my first car. But I also loved Colbert, and his speech made me start to reevaluate how I felt about certain Bush policies. That’s the power of comedy.

I was thrilled when Colbert was named as host of “The Late Show.” I listened to the show’s podcast and streamed the previous evening’s show when I got home each day. I told everyone around me to read the GQ profile of Colbert where he discusses losing his father and two brothers in a plane crash.

There was so much depth to Colbert. He was going to bring something new and fresh to late-night comedy. When Colbert began the show, he told the Late Show’s bandleader and close friend, Jon Batiste, he wanted “a show about people and about love and about being a friend to the regular people out there.”

But that didn’t sell as well. And Colbert floundered, often sliding far behind in the ratings. Until he found a magic formula: relentlessly mocking only one side of the aisle, not only Trump but his supporters and anyone who held views to the right of the Democratic Party. He would become a partisan, a shameless cheerleader for the Democratic Party Establishment.

It worked. Contempt, not love, helped shoot Colbert to #1 in the ratings. And soon, nearly everyone in late night followed suit.

Caitlin Flannagan, in her piece for The Atlantic, “How Late Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump,” detailed the vagaries of Trump but also the galling response from late-night comedians:

Trump has it coming, and so do the minions pouring out of his clown car, with their lies and their gleeful disregard for what Nick Carraway called “the fundamental decencies.” But somewhere along the way, the hosts of the late-night shows decided that they had carte blanche to insult not just the people within this administration, but also the ordinary citizens who support Trump, and even those who merely identify as conservatives.

The art for the article really captures the new dynamic of late night and Colbert’s central role in it.

“I want a show about people and about love and about being a friend to the regular people out there.”

Colbert turned late night into an endless contempt fest. And he has that right. He has that freedom of speech. I wish he had used his platform differently. But I defend his right to free speech and any effort to curtail those rights should be fought vigorously.

Colbert’s contempt isn’t why I think he’s a poor choice for free speech martyr. It’s something deeper.

The Colbert Campaign Stop

On Monday, Feb. 16–the evening before early voting began in Texas—“The Late Show” was set to run an interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate.

But the segment never aired on TV.

The segment did appear, however, on the show’s YouTube account, which you can watch here:

This was the softest of softball interviews. It was a Nerf ball interview.

Colbert claims he was told “in no uncertain terms” by CBS lawyers that he could not air the interview with Talarico. CBS lawyers claim they provided “legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.” Crockett claims Colbert’s team never contacted her. Talarico claims his interview was “banned” by the FCC (that is misleading, to put it mildly).

There are lots of competing claims here but I would be livid if I were Crockett. Recent polling puts Talarico and Crockett within a percentage point of one another–a dead heat. And Colbert appears to have used his show to tip the scales in a highly competitive primary. I want Talarico to win this primary. I think he is a much better candidate than Rep. Jasmine Crockett. But I think Colbert’s conduct is questionable.

CBS lawyers weren’t claiming Trump’s FCC would force him to interview Paxton, they reminded Colbert of the law, which could require him to give “equal time” to the other candidates, if requested.

Here is the summary on the U.S. Congress website:

Section 315(a) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, requires broadcast licensees to afford “equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office” in the event that the licensee permits a candidate for public office” to use a broadcasting station.” The FCC has issued a regulation pursuant to this statutory directive. The rule contains exceptions, including when a candidate appears on a “bona fide newscast” or in “on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events.” This rule is colloquially referred to as the “equal time rule,” though this phrase does not appear in the rule or in the provision of the Communications Act authorizing it.

Since 2006, the FCC has allowed interviews on late-night shows to be considered “bona fide news.” But Carr sent a memo in January signalling he was reversing that precedent and would be targeting “The View” and other late night and daytime talk shows for equal time violations.

Multiple things can be true at once:

• Brendan Carr is a bad-faith actor who is using rules on the books to go after liberal leaning TV shows while not applying the same scrutiny to conservative radio.

• The FCC has a long and terrible history of using regulations developed for regulating the radio airwaves decades ago, and applying them in a context that looks very different from when they were written.

• Colbert used his platform to boost one candidate over another in a highly competitive primary.

• Colbert and most late-night comedy shows have become extremely partisan, a stark departure from decades past.

I reviewed the YouTube channel for The Late Show and noted the Dem/GOP elected officials and partisans. You can find the full list here.

Talarico is among nine democratic elected officials to appear on The Late Show in the past three months, a list that includes Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Josh Shapiro and Abigail Spanberger. Zero GOP elected officials have come on the show during that time. At least 10 other guests are deep partisans like Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, Chris Hayes and Michelle Obama. I’m not even counting the many liberal celebrities who have appeared on the show.

The only potential GOP partisan (who isn’t even partisan) is…Sydney Sweeney?

Colbert’s cause isn’t righteous; it’s nakedly partisan. The FCC is wrong to intervene, but that doesn’t make Colbert righteous.

Don’t make Colbert a free speech martyr

I recently attended an event in Austin for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, where Greg Lukianoff was interviewed about threats to freedom of speech. He echoed concerns about the FCC, which was initially created to regulate the airwaves for radio but has grown in power in ways that directly threaten freedom of speech.

But he also reiterated a common theme of his: free speech is essential to the process of approaching truth and avoiding ignorance.

Trump does not care about free speech. Elon Musk has no consistent principles on the subject, either. Brendan Carr is no champion of the First Amendment.

But you know who else isn’t a champion of free speech? Stephen Colbert.

Conservatives (rightly) point out the Biden Administration pressured social media companies and YouTube to censor content related to COVID-19, including satire and humor. As Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who shared science-based analysis of COVID policies but was censored, testified to the U.S. Congress:

What this case has revealed is that a dozen federal agencies, including the CDC, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the White House pressured social media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor and deboost even true speech that contradicted federal pandemic priorities, including especially inconvenient facts about the covid vaccines such as its inefficacy against covid disease transmission.

Did Colbert sound the alarm then? No, he encouraged it. In a July 2021 episode, he lamented that “the only thing spreading faster than COVID variants is COVID misinformation” and cheered Meta’s efforts to root out what the Biden Administration deemed “misinformation.” Zuckerberg would later state he regretted bowing to the pressure campaign from the Biden White House.

Colbert would not abide any perspectives that diverged from the narrative of the Biden Administration. Even when Colbert’s longtime friend Jon Stewart came on the show and did a bit about COVID originating in a lab–which many agencies now believe to be the likeliest cause–Colbert kept interrupting and would barely let him finish.

When the Biden’s FBI pressured social media companies to block the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Colbert mocked conservatives for complaining. Among the segments was a mocking song calling the Hunter Biden laptop story “debunked claims of made up kompromat,” a “conspiracy” and that Trump “got it from Vladdy P.”

The laptop story was later confirmed to be true.

This was just pure propaganda. It was misinformation, just like when Jimmy Kimmel claimed Charlie Kirk’s assassin was MAGA. There is no consistent standard for when the government should intervene to stop misinformation other than, “if the red team does it, it’s bad.”

Colbert has used his platform to cheer the censorship of speech he views as bad (even if true) and has narrowed the range of guests and perspectives to only those aligned with the DNC. The Late Show does not serve the public interest; it serves the Democratic Party and Colbert’s bottomless grandiosity.

The Dietrich Bonhoeffers of Late Night

All this brings me to my recent piece for “The Coddling of the American Mind” Substack about the fall of Colbert and Kimmel and the historical context of FCC censorship. Here’s how I began the essay:

At 2:30 a.m., the chairman of CBS got a phone call. It was the president of the United States. And he was irate.

“Get those bastards off my back,” the notoriously thin-skinned president shouted. He resented being mocked on one of CBS’ evening comedy programs. The president of the United States was close to the leadership of CBS, and would often vent his frustrations.

The early months of a new administration—led by a man who previously occupied the White House—further imperiled the show. The administration began leaning on the Federal Communications Commission to threaten stations’ broadcast license renewals, citing the Fairness Doctrine.

It wasn’t just the administration. The program’s content was agitating local affiliates and advertisers. In time, the comedy hosts were taken off the air.

This opening story isn’t about Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel in 2025. The above describes the experience of Dick and Tom Smothers in the 1960s. There are parallels to the experiences of Kimmel and Colbert, but there is one major difference: The Smothers Brothers mocked the powerful, regardless of who was in power, drawing the ire of both the Johnson and Nixon administrations over the course of just three seasons.

Kimmel and Colbert didn’t challenge whoever was in power, they became partisan mouthpieces for the DNC. This was most evident during the final months of the Biden presidency:

In 2006, Stephen Colbert gave a brilliant and blistering speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, skewering President Bush mere feet away. This is a moment many comedians and commentators remember because it was so bold. It was literally speaking truth to power.

In 2024, Colbert stood onstage with President Biden—but not to skewer him. To fundraise for him.

Not to be outdone, Jimmy Kimmel also hosted a separate Democratic fundraiser with George Clooney and others. Weeks later, after Biden’s disastrous debate, George Clooney wrote his famous New York Times op-ed admitting that “the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

If George Clooney saw this, surely Kimmel did, too. So did Colbert (even though he claims otherwise). So did anyone who had spent any time with Biden at a fundraiser or during a softball interview.

You can’t help cover up Biden’s cognitive decline—one of the worst scandals in recent history—and then lecture the American people about “speaking truth to power” and the fight for democracy.

You can’t only “speak truth to power” when its Trump or Republicans but let your own tribe off the hook. That’s not being prophetic, that being deeply partisan.

You can’t cheer when your team uses the FCC to stifle speech and then sound the alarm about First Amendment violations when it applies to you.

You can’t poison the airwaves with night after night of contempt and claim you are about Christianity and you want “a show about love.”

Not All Saints Wear Robes

During the interview that later went viral, Colbert and Talarico shared compliments with each other on how they exemplified the Christian virtues. Colbert would go viral and Talarico would raise millions by claiming Trump “banned” Talarico from the air, even though CBS’ statement makes it clear Colbert was given options to satisfy a law on the books, and he refused.

Toward the end, Talarico extolled Colbert’s Christian witness:

I just want to thank you, Stephen, because I know you’re not a politician, but you have really shown people in this country what Christianity should be, and what it looks like to actually live out the teachings of Jesus–even in a talk show.

Oh Saint James, please.