FCC Attempt to Kill Stephen Colbert Interview Completely Backfires
The Trump administration tried to prevent late-night television host Stephen Colbert from airing his interview with Texas state Representative and Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, but the attempt has backfired.Instead of including the interview in his CBS show Monday night, which the network’s lawyers had warned against, Colbert posted the interview to YouTube and other social media channels, where it has already garnered millions of views on each platform, much more than a single TV broadcast of the show, which averages 2.3 million viewers.Talarico himself posted the interview to his X account with the caption, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.” It has gotten 8.3 million views as of this writing. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s YouTube channel, the interview has 2.4 million views, and clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are also getting millions of viewers.Colbert defied CBS by mentioning the interview during his show Monday night and urging viewers to watch it online. He also called out the Federal Communications Commission and its Trump-appointed head, Brendan Carr, for the agency’s new rule requiring late-night talk shows to provide equal time for candidates across the political spectrum. Colbert highlighted a recent clip of Carr discussing both him and fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel.“If Kimmel or Colbert want to continue to do their programming, and they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service, and that’s fine,” Carr said in the clip. Colbert took Carr’s advice and put his interview with Talarico online, where it has taken off, giving Colbert and Talarico more publicity than they would have had otherwise.