Days after the shocking cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” FCC chairman Brendan Carr went on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” to talk with co-host Bill Hemmer — and the anchor wasted no time addressing the elephant in the room.
“Let’s just go ahead and get it out of the way,” Hemmer began. “Did President Trump have anything to do with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show?”
Carr dodged the question. When the journalist later tried to follow up, asking for a yes-or-no answer, his guest again did the same thing.
“Well, here’s what’s important to keep in mind, is a broader dynamic,” Carr said. “When President Trump ran for election, he ran right at these legacy broadcast media outfits and the New York and Hollywood elites that are behind it, and he smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can control what Americans think and what Americans can say.”
“Once you do that, you’ve exposed the business model of a lot of these outfits as being nothing more than a partisan circus,” Carr said on the Fox News program. “I think there’s a lot of consequences that are flowing from President Trump deciding, ‘I’m not going to play by the rules of politicians in the past and let these legacy outfits dictate the narratives and the terms of the debate.’”
Last week, Colbert announced that May 2026 would mark the end of his “Late Show” — and the franchise as a whole. CBS cited the move as a “financial decision” in a joint statement by Paramount Global Co-CEO George Cheeks, CBS president Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios president David Stapf. They noted that it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
But many have found this hard to believe. Only days before the cancellation, Colbert used his show to call parent company Paramount’s recent $16 million settlement with Donald Trump a “big fat bribe” to help their Skydance Media merger go through. Given Trump’s frequent criticism of Colbert and other left-leaning media figures, a call for transparency has come from celebrities, politicians and groups like the WGA wanting to look into whether Colbert’s on-air criticisms were truly to blame — and if Trump had a hand in the cancellation.
Carr wouldn’t say whether or not Trump personally called for Colbert’s show to be taken off the air. He did, however, point to other media groups that Trump has had a hand in defunding.
“He’s succeeding. Just look at what’s happening. NPR’s been defunded. PBS has been defunded. Colbert is getting cancer,” Carr misspoke. “You’ve got anchors and news media personalities losing their jobs. Again, all of this is downstream of President Trump’s decision to stand up. And he stood up for the American people, because the American people do not trust these legacy gatekeepers anymore, and all of this I think is consequences of that broader dynamic.”
Hemmer followed that speech by asking, plainly, if Trump was involved in the cancellation. The FCC Chairman again evaded a yes-or-no answer.
“I asked a very direct question,” Hemmer said. “I did not hear a yes or a no in your answer. I heard a maybe.”
“Yeah, ultimately these are business decisions for CBS to make and for these outfits to make,” Carr continued. “I’m, you know, shocked that the type of stuff that you just played they don’t find to be in their profitable business interests.”
“Hmm. OK,” Hemmer concluded.
