Fast-forward to this month, when Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement to move past Trump’s claims that CBS’s 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) alleged the settlement was a bribe to get the Skydance deal done.
Recently, comedian Stephen Colbert—whose popular CBS Late Show will be canceled next May despite being No. 1 in the late-night talk show ratings, in what many view as censorship due to his jokes about Trump—pointedly mocked the settlement the first chance he got, AP News reported.
Joking that “cancel culture’s gone way too far,” Colbert declared, “I can say what I really think of Donald Trump, starting right now.” He teased that Trump doesn’t seem to have the “skillset to be president,” then took a jab at the settlement after sarcastically acknowledging news reports that claimed leaked documents suggested that the Late Show was losing CBS at least $40 million annually.
“I could see us losing $24 million,” Colbert said. “But where would Paramount have ever spent the other $16 million? Oh, yeah.”
Like many protesting Colbert’s firing, Gomez suggested that the FCC’s requirements to approve the Skydance acquisition “may only be” the “beginning” of the Trump administration’s censorship and ongoing “assault on the First Amendment.”
Notably, the White House issued a rare statement in response to a recent South Park episode Paramount aired, which mockingly depicted Trump seducing Satan. The White House fumed that “no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.” But Trump (whose current term’s ratings are at an all-time low) taking the time to acknowledge the episode drew jokes on social media that South Park may have riled Trump enough to scramble the Paramount acquisition approval. At the very least, the statement shows that Trump still cares what people say about him on TV. Trump has long been considered the US president most obsessed with TV, and critics now fear that he has seized new powers to more effectively block negative coverage.
