Stephen Colbert declares ‘gloves are off' as cancelled Late Show host takes aim at Trump
Colbert, the top-rated late-night talk show host in the US, said last week on his CBS show Late Night – which he took over from David Letterman in 2015 – that Paramount's decision to pay a $16m settlement to Trump over another flagship CBS show, 60 Minutes, amounted to a 'big fat bribe'. CBS is part of Paramount, which needs the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission to approve its $8bn sale to Skydance.
Paramount pulled the plug three days later, with Trump revelling in the firing of one of his most prolific detractors, posting on his Truth Social platform: 'I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.'
Colbert came out swinging on Monday, telling Trump to 'go fuck yourself'.
He joked that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.
'They're pointing out that last Monday, just two days before my cancellation, I delivered a blistering monologue in which I showed the courage to have a moustache,' he joked.
'I mean, obviously, CBS saw my upper lip and boom, cancelled. Coincidence? Oh, I think not. This is worse than fascism. This is stachism.'
In an anonymous leak over the weekend, CBS had appeared to suggest the Late Show lost $40m-$50m last year. Colbert joked that he could account for losing $24m annually. 'Where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16m?' he joked. 'Oh yeah.'
In a gesture of solidarity, Colbert's fellow late-night show hosts – Last Week Tonight's John Oliver, Late Night's Seth Meyers and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart – all showed up for a joke in Monday night's episode. They were joined by other entertainers and journalists including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Weird Al Yankovic, Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper, Adam Sandler and Christopher McDonald.
Meanwhile Stewart, who gave Colbert his late-night start in the 1990s, issued a blistering attack of his own. On Monday's episode of The Daily Show – which is also part of Paramount – Stewart lambasted its decision to cancel Colbert's show.
'The fact that CBS didn't try to save their No 1 rated late-night franchise that's been on the air for over three decades is part of what's making everybody wonder,' Stewart said on his Comedy Central program. 'Was this purely financial, or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8bn merger?'
He added: 'If you believe – as corporations or as networks – that you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavourless that you will never again be on the boy king's radar … Why would anyone watch you? And you are fucking wrong.'
Stewart then led a choir and the audience in a chant of 'go fuck yourselves', directed at corporations who bent the knee to Trump.
Over on The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon noted that viewers were planning to boycott the network over the decision. 'CBS could lose millions of viewers, plus tens of hundreds watching on Paramount+,' he joked.
On air, Colbert was visibly moved after his guest, the actor Sandra Oh, proclaimed a 'plague on CBS and Paramount,' paying tribute to his work speaking truth to power while staying funny.
Skipping a promised question-and-answer session after the taping of Monday's show, Colbert told his studio audience, 'I was nervous coming out here,' and added: 'I will miss you.'
Outside the headquarters of The Late Show, which is taped at midtown Manhattan's Ed Sullivan Theater, protesters held placards that said: 'Colbert Stays! Trump Must Go!'
Audience member Elizabeth Kott, a 48-year-old high school teacher, called Colbert's firing 'terrible'.
'It's really awful that it's come to that in this country, where companies feel the need to obey in advance. It's really awful,' she told AFP.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Popular TV series to get a new title ahead of season 3 launch
The acclaimed TV series Interview with the Vampire will be rebranded as The Vampire Lestat for its third season. AMC announced the name change at San Diego Comic-Con, with the new season set to adapt Anne Rice's second novel in the series. The show stars Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Reid as Lestat de Lioncourt, with new cast additions for season three. The article also references the 1994 film adaptation, where Tom Cruise 's casting as Lestat was initially met with fan criticism. Film director Neil Jordan revealed he first offered the role of Lestat in the movie to Daniel Day-Lewis, who declined.
.jpeg%3Ftrim%3D0%2C5%2C0%2C5%26width%3D1200%26height%3D800%26crop%3D1200%3A800&w=3840&q=100)
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
White House reportedly told Pete Hegseth's team to stop doing polygraph tests after complaint
The White House has put a stop to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 's alleged use of polygraph tests in an attempt to root out leakers to the press, according to a new report. As Hegseth became embroiled in the Signalgate scandal, his team began administering polygraph tests in April to those in his inner circle, U.S. officials, and others with knowledge of the matter, according to The Washington Post. The White House's intervention came after Hegseth's senior advisor, Patrick Weaver, raised concerns to officials that he could be the next target of the defense secretary 's polygraph campaign, the sources said. Weaver, who held posts in the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Council in Donald Trump 's first administration, allegedly grew irate after learning he might be ordered to take a polygraph test. Weaver remains an adviser to Hegseth, according to The Post. The alleged spate of polygraphs came during a tumultuous period where Hegseth fired three senior Pentagon appointees – Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick – who he accused of leaking classified and sensitive information to the media. The men deny any accusations of wrongdoing, and Hegseth's team has presented no evidence to back its claims. Just days later, the defense secretary was engulfed in Signalgate after top officials mistakenly included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal group chat, giving him a front-row seat to discussions about impending U.S. strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen back in March. Multiple tests were carried out over several weeks, with approval from Hegseth and his private attorney, Tim Parlatore, the sources said. However, a Trump administration official intervened with a phone call, instructing the Defense Department to halt the campaign. Members of the Joint Service Interagency Advisory Group, a specialized Pentagon team assembled to address national security issues like drug cartels, had already been administered tests prior to Weaver's complaint, the sources added. Senior Hegseth advisor Colonel Ricky Buria took a polygraph test and received inconclusive results, the sources said, which officials first told the Guardian in May. Navy Admiral Christopher Grady, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, have also faced the threat of polygraph tests, those with knowledge of the matter said. The Pentagon declined to provide a comment to the newspaper on reports of polygraph testing, citing an 'ongoing investigation.' 'The Fake News Media's obsession with months-old workplace gossip is a reflection of the sad and pathetic state of 'journalism' in Washington,' spokesperson Sean Parnell said. Despite facing multiple scandals, Trump continues to publicly support Hegseth. 'A lot of people swirl shit to try to take him down, honestly — but talk of drama with him is overblown,' a senior White House official told Politico on Monday. 'What I know is that everyone who matters has his back completely, currently.' However, some Trump allies and MAGA supporters have expressed concerns that the defense secretary's controversies could damage the administration's credibility. One source close to Hegseth said he is being urged to make peace with the employees he has ousted. 'If there's any chance at Pete resetting and ensuring that whatever time he has left in this position is well served, he's got to do it — otherwise Pete is just doubling down on the lie,' they told Politico.
The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Creating realistic deepfakes is getting easier than ever. Fighting back may take even more AI
The phone rings. It's the secretary of state calling. Or is it? For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump 's administration. Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age. Responding to the challenge will require laws, better digital literacy and technical solutions that fight AI with more AI. 'As humans, we are remarkably susceptible to deception,' said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of the tech firm Pindrop Security. But he believes solutions to the challenge of deepfakes may be within reach: 'We are going to fight back.' AI deepfakes become a national security threat This summer, someone used AI to create a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an attempt to reach out to foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor over text, voice mail and the Signal messaging app. In May someone impersonated Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Another phony Rubio had popped up in a deepfake earlier this year, saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine's access to Elon Musk's Starlink internet service. Ukraine's government later rebutted the false claim. The national security implications are huge: People who think they're chatting with Rubio or Wiles, for instance, might discuss sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations or military strategy. 'You're either trying to extract sensitive secrets or competitive information or you're going after access, to an email server or other sensitive network," Kinny Chan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm QiD, said of the possible motivations. Synthetic media can also aim to alter behavior. Last year, Democratic voters in New Hampshire received a robocall urging them not to vote in the state's upcoming primary. The voice on the call sounded suspiciously like then-President Joe Biden but was actually created using AI. Their ability to deceive makes AI deepfakes a potent weapon for foreign actors. Both Russia and China have used disinformation and propaganda directed at Americans as a way of undermining trust in democratic alliances and institutions. Steven Kramer, the political consultant who admitted sending the fake Biden robocalls, said he wanted to send a message of the dangers deepfakes pose to the American political system. Kramer was acquitted last month of charges of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate. 'I did what I did for $500,' Kramer said. 'Can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese government decided to do this?' Scammers target the financial industry with deepfakes The greater availability and sophistication of the programs mean deepfakes are increasingly used for corporate espionage and garden variety fraud. 'The financial industry is right in the crosshairs," said Jennifer Ewbank, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked on cybersecurity and digital threats. 'Even individuals who know each other have been convinced to transfer vast sums of money.' In the context of corporate espionage, they can be used to impersonate CEOs asking employees to hand over passwords or routing numbers. Deepfakes can also allow scammers to apply for jobs — and even do them — under an assumed or fake identity. For some this is a way to access sensitive networks, to steal secrets or to install ransomware. Others just want the work and may be working a few similar jobs at different companies at the same time. Authorities in the U.S. have said that thousands of North Koreans with information technology skills have been dispatched to live abroad, using stolen identities to obtain jobs at tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The workers get access to company networks as well as a paycheck. In some cases, the workers install ransomware that can be later used to extort even more money. The schemes have generated billions of dollars for the North Korean government. Within three years, as many as 1 in 4 job applications is expected to be fake, according to research from Adaptive Security, a cybersecurity company. 'We've entered an era where anyone with a laptop and access to an open-source model can convincingly impersonate a real person,' said Brian Long, Adaptive's CEO. 'It's no longer about hacking systems — it's about hacking trust.' Experts deploy AI to fight back against AI Researchers, public policy experts and technology companies are now investigating the best ways of addressing the economic, political and social challenges posed by deepfakes. New regulations could require tech companies to do more to identify, label and potentially remove deepfakes on their platforms. Lawmakers could also impose greater penalties on those who use digital technology to deceive others — if they can be caught. Greater investments in digital literacy could also boost people's immunity to online deception by teaching them ways to spot fake media and avoid falling prey to scammers. The best tool for catching AI may be another AI program, one trained to sniff out the tiny flaws in deepfakes that would go unnoticed by a person. Systems like Pindrop's analyze millions of datapoints in any person's speech to quickly identify irregularities. The system can be used during job interviews or other video conferences to detect if the person is using voice cloning software, for instance. Similar programs may one day be commonplace, running in the background as people chat with colleagues and loved ones online. Someday, deepfakes may go the way of email spam, a technological challenge that once threatened to upend the usefulness of email, said Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop's CEO. 'You can take the defeatist view and say we're going to be subservient to disinformation," he said. 'But that's not going to happen.'
