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CNN Live Event/Special

The Last Laugh: Stephen Colbert; White House Shooting Suspect Shot And Killed. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired May 23, 2026 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[22:00:53]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: One of the great things about this country is the ability to openly mock the most powerful people in the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Satire in America is so important because it really is the bedrock of what we say our country is and what it should be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no question that Stephen Colbert is one of the most important satirists in U.S. history.

STEPHEN COLBERT, FORMER "THE LATE SHOW" HOST: Hello, freedom lovers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's really invested in challenging power and questioning authority.

COLBERT: This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stephen obviously had a huge role in shaping television satire between "The Daily Show," "Colbert Report" and "The Late Show."

COLBERT: Mr. Trump, your presidency. I love your presidency. I call it disgrace the nation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But show was taken off the air.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The most watched show in late night is being canceled.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: CBS is ending "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seemed completely insane to me that show would get canceled.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is this about politics or is this a business decision?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Colbert is a frequent critic of President Trump whose administration is currently overseeing a merger of CBS, his parent company.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that it benefits Trump to not have Stephen on CBS anymore.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Colbert has no talent. The guy on CBS is -- what a low life. I mean, honestly, are these people funny?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With Colbert, you are losing one of Donald Trump's biggest critics. And the way he's able to frame the debate with humor, I think is something that is going to be lost for people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I first saw Stephen on "The Late Show," I looked at him and I realized at that moment, Stephen Colbert has reached his lifelong dream of doing what he wanted to do with his life, which is being Stephen Colbert.

TAPPER: There's always been a gravity to his persona and who he is as well, because he is willing to take "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert to a deeper and more an emotionally fulfilling place than a lot of his peers.

JORDAN CARLOS, COMEDIAN: I think that Colbert hasn't been afraid to go there.

COLBERT: If our next president is a single celled organism, then Trump's going to look great. You know.

DAVID RAZOWSKY, FORMER MEMBER, "THE SECOND CITY": Looking at Colbert's monologue at the beginning of the show, you know, like, that's somebody who's fearless. And "The Second City" teaches you how to do that, how to craft that.

FRAN ADAMS, FORMER MEMBER, "THE SECOND CITY": "Second City" is an improvisational theater that was started in the 60s, and the reputation was huge. I worked there from '87 to '94.

RAZOWSKY: I was a member of "The Second City" for probably 24, 25 years.

ADAMS: I worked with Stephen Colbert.

RAZOWSKY: And I have worked extensively with Stephen Colbert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When Stephen encountered "Second City" in the late 80s, it was a major draw. Everyone from Alan Arkin and John Belushi and John Candy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stephen Carell, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey.

LARRY KING, CNN HOST: What made "Second City" special?

COLBERT: You didn't have to learn any lines because you could improvise.

KING: But a lot of great ones. Shelly Berman started there.

COLBERT: Yes, a bunch of the original SNL people there I hired the same day as Chris Farley.

MIKE THOMAS, AUTHOR, THE SECON CITY UNSCRIPTED: Stephen had wanted to be a serious actor before he got to "Second City," but he hooks up with people like Amy Sedaris and Paul Danello, and they really loosened him up and taught him know it was okay to fail, it was OK to look with ridiculous.

[22:05:12]

RAZOWSKY: When you're giving an opportunity to fail, and you know that failure is not going to get you fired, what can't you do?

There was a scene called Maya.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shirley, Shirley Whiteworth. It's been missing.

ADAMS: He and Carell are walking through Stephen's hometown, and everyone starts addressing Stephen as if he's an old black woman.

COLBERT: Oh, I forgot to tell you, when I'm home, I'm an old black woman.

RAZOWSKY: The entire scene, I think, is satirical. A white man becoming a black woman. Woman. What is that like?

In that piece, I played his suitor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who's your lovely friend, Steve? Stephen. One of the finest men I know.

RAZOWSKY: It got really intimate where I got closer and we were talking, I got closer, we were talking, I got closer. Then there was a silence, and then there was a kiss.

This was in 1994 in Chicago. But it being 1994 in Chicago doesn't mean that there weren't people that were very offended by that.

We would hear people in the audience say some of the most vile things I've ever heard people in an audience say. He pushed that envelope, and that challenges everybody.

ADAMS: Stephen loved the truth in the moment. He's comfortable to sit in it.

RAZOWSKY: He's always been that way.

THOMAS: Stephen was the youngest of 11 kids. He spent most of his growing up years in South Carolina, Charleston. When Stephen is 10 years old, his father and two of his brothers died in an airplane crash. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An Eastern Airlines jet crashed and burned this morning while trying to land at Charlotte, North Carolina's Douglas Municipal Airport. 69 people were killed. 13 Others survived.

THOMAS: That affects him deeply.

TAPPER: One of the things he told me was about on his way back from the funeral, seeing one of his sisters make the other sister laugh.

COLBERT: I thought, oh, I want to be able to do that. I wanted in on the intimacy of being able to make each other feel better, even in that moment.

TAPPER: And he remembered at the time thinking to himself, that's what I want to do.

THOMAS: And that is really, I think, the root of everything.

ADAMS: Stephen was always including the world into the local theater.

RAZOWSKY: There was a scene that we did that was about Bill and Hillary Clinton in their bed at the White House.

ADAMS: And then Stephen pops up as Al Gore.

RAZOWSKY: And then would just go over the day's events in a satirical way.

COLBERT: You know, the 37 million people that we can't insure or we just convince them to become Christian scientists?

ADAMS: We didn't have smartphones, and you actually had to carry the Tribune and the Sun Times with you. Stephen Colbert almost always had a paper, and he did have a weird ability to remember specifics.

THOMAS: Steve quickly discovered at "Second City" that he had this ability to play high status idiots. These people who thought the world of themselves and their abilities but actually knew absolutely nothing.

RAZOWSKY: Whatever it was that he learned at "Second City," he brought to "The Daily Show."

THOMAS: Stephen ends up joining "The Daily Show" in 1997. He loves playing guys who think they know everything. And that's really Stephen's launching pad for a huge national career.

RAZOWSKY: And when I saw him on "The Daily Show," I'm like, he's on his way to being Stephen Colbert.

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[22:13:08]

TAPPER: OK, perfect. Ready to go. Stephen and I have been friends since 2004. I met him in Iowa during the Iowa caucus somewhere at a school where Howard Dean was doing an event.

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF VERMONT: We need to win here in Iowa City.

TAPPER: At the time, Stephen was a correspondent for "The Daily Show." His character was this kind of moronic, out of touch right winger, and we were both competing for a Howard Dean interview.

COLBERT: What does the cow say?

DEAN: The cow says that corporations should not own feedlots and farms that ought to be left to small farmers.

COLBERT: I'm sorry, the cow says moo.

TAPPER: The very next year, he was my date to the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In the middle of that dinner, he got up and he was gone for a long time.

When he came back, he said, I just agreed to a deal with Comedy Central to do my own show. And like an idiot, I blurted out the first thing on my mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was worried because I didn't know if you could do the character for half hour.

COLBERT: I knew I could do it for a half an hour. I'm not sure if I could do it a half an hour more than once. I thought maybe by the second night, people go, that guy's a complete a hole. Why did I watch him?

THOMAS: By the time Stephen left "The Daily Show," he had perfected his character of the high status idiot. And so he created "The Colbert Report." Silent T.

ALLISON SILVERMAN, EXEC. PRODUCER AND SHOWRUNNER, THE COLBERT REPORT: Calling it "The Colbert Report" is kind of about the ego of the character that he can take tease off whenever he chooses. So the premise of "The Colbert Report" is that Stephen is a right-wing pundit, the type that was very much in vogue in the early 2000s. Glenn Beck was one of them. Rush Limbaugh, but really, Bill O'Reilly was sort of envisioned as the foil.

THOMAS: Bill was a very popular host on Fox, was very sure of himself, even if what he was saying could seem nonsensical.

BILL O'REILLY, FORMER TV HOST: Christmas has become controversial in America. Public displays of the federal holiday are under attack by the ACLU, and some department stores even tell employees to avoid saying Merry Christmas.

RICHARD DAHM, CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "THE COLBERT REPORT": There's a war on Christmas. You can't say Merry Christmas anymore. This was like a Bill O'Reilly thing. A lot of what these shows dealt in is fear and, like, finding something to turn into a threat.

And so we wanted to deal in those sorts of things. Like, we wanted Stephen's character to have a strong opinion about everything.

SOPHIA MCCLENNEN, AUTHOR, "COLBERT'S AMERICA: SATIRE AND DEMOCRACY": For their first show, they came up with a recurring segment called the Word.

COLBERT: I will speak to you in plain simple English. And that brings us to tonight's word truthiness.

DAHM: The point behind the truthiness word was basically that Stephen's character isn't going to worry about the minutiae of all the facts. He's going to just give it to you the way he sees it, the way he feels it.

COLBERT: We are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided between those who think with and those who know with their heart.

MCCLENNEN: And this, of course, was meant to be a commentary on the idea that under George W. Bush, we had an administration that was telling us that it was making decisions based on how it felt.

SILVERMAN: President Bush had talked about Vladimir Putin.

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I looked the man in the eye. I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy. I was able to get a sense of his soul.

SILVERMAN: And when Stephen said truthiness is the mission of this show, it just felt like we were anchored.

TAPPER: "The Colbert Report" was a completely new take on how to mock the people in charge.

MCCLENNEN: The U.S. has an incredibly long history of the use of satire to comment on politics.

CARLOS: I like to call it like the Fifth Estate. Right. So if journalism is the fourth Estate, satire is the fifth estate. It's basically using comedy and irony to make commentary about power structures, the powers that be.

And it's a bit of a canary in a coal mine. In the 1930s in Germany, they closed the cabaret theaters because there was a certain guy, a little mustache man, that did not like the jokes that were being made. Right? So it's a barometer. It lets us know that society is functioning enough to be able to sustain criticism.

MCCLENNEN: Early satire was often cartoons. They're what are today's memes? We have examples of the "Join or Die" cartoon, Ben Franklin tried to make it very clear what would be the point of fighting for independence then we have great examples from New York.

CARLOS: William Tweed basically ran New York City, Tammany Hall. He was Trump before there was Trump. And so what Thomas Nast did was he made a series of cartoons. One image of Tweed is just like, he's a -- his head is a sack of money and he's showing the blow of gluttony and corruption.

MCCLENNEN: The Nast cartoons managed to communicate to the public information about Boss Tweed in ways that literal serious journalism can't.

CARLOS: We saw in the later 20th century satire highlighted with comedians.

MCCLENNEN: People like Lenny Bruce going after hypocrisy, prejudice, bias, particularly conservative morality.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about time that the people got hit to something, how the system works in our country.

MCCLENNEN: When he knew he would be arrested, he would go up and say what he planned to say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to the Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour.

MCCLENNEN: "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was on CBS, and it was a variety show. And what they did, though, was that they used their sort of clean cut, boyish adorableness to point out the problems with the Vietnam War.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The song is called "The Draft Dodger Rag."

MCCLENNEN: Now, bear in mind, at that time, that was rare because on network television generally there was support. So the story goes that Lyndon Johnson would call the president of CBS and say, why are you letting these guys do this? And it wasn't until Nixon was in office and was complaining again about what the Smothers Brothers were doing that they were effectively canceled.

[22:20:06]

CARLOS: When I think of, like, "The Daily Show," these are all forms of satire.

MCCLENNEN: What Jon Stewart would do is he would take a current issue and he'd give his ironic twist.

GIANMARCO SORESI, COMEDIAN: Jon Stewart was critiquing the powers that be as himself, whereas "The Colbert Report" was an embodiment of the things Jon Stewart was critiquing.

And so I think Colbert's, if he is the king of satire, it is during "Colbert Report."

DANIEL FIENBERG, CHIEF TELEVISION CRITIFC, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: We had a segment called "Better Know a District" where Stephen would interview a U.S. representative. He had a conversation with Robert Wexler, who was running uncontested for his seat. And basically, Colbert made the point.

Well, if you're running uncontested, you can say anything.

COLBERT: I enjoy cocaine. Because.

ROBERT WEXLER, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: This would lose me the election.

COLBERT: Yes, the thing you say would lose you the election if you said it. But you're not going to because you're uncontested. There's no way you can lose. Right.

WEXLER: I enjoy cocaine because --

COLBERT: You'll try without laughing, because then people will think it's a joke.

WEXLER: Oh, because it's a fun thing to do.

COLBERT: You got to start from the beginning.

FIENBERG: He would get congresspeople to say the most outlandish of things, and they played along.

SILVERMAN: Sometimes you would get people on the show that you wouldn't expect. And I think number one would be Bill O'Reilly himself. Keep in mind, this whole show was built up to kind of send up Bill O'Reilly.

And then O'Reilly came on, and Colbert interviewed him. And in the course of the interview, O'Reilly says, my persona is an act.

O'REILLY: I'm a feat. I'm not a tough guy. This is all an act.

COLBERT: You're breaking my heart sensitive. You know, if you're an act, then what am I?

SILVERMAN: I mean, it truly becomes very meta.

CARLOS: He was so successful in portraying this character. I think it fooled people into believing that this was just like a Fox show that, like, lost its way and somehow ended up on Comedy Central.

MCCLENNEN: And in fact, that's why Colbert was able to get the gig at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, because they didn't know who they'd booked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stephen Colbert.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) [22:26:02]

TAPPER: 2005 is an era where the war in Iraq is raging and President Bush is starting to lose popularity. And one of the things that the Bush White House was doing was lying.

COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors.

TAPPER: Brazenly, nakedly, about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about the use of torture by the U.S. against suspected terrorists and the like.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Former officials say tough interrogation techniques used on al Qaeda prisoners have saved American lives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had the president saying, mission accomplished.

BUSH: In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had Hurricane Katrina and you had an economy that was really spiraling out of control.

STEVE SCULLY, FORMER PRESIDENT OF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' ASSOCIATION: So, it's mid to late summer of 2005, and we're meeting as members of the White House Correspondents' Association, thinking, OK, who do we want next year? Who's going to be the comedian? And I recall talking to Mark Smith, the White House Correspondents' Association president, and I was the incoming vice president and said, how about Stephen Colbert? We looked at some of his work and Mark Smith said, yes, let's go for it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The big news story of this week is this --

CARLOS: The White House Correspondents' Dinner has a long and storied tradition.

SCULLY: Every year for well over 100 years, White House reporters have gathered together and the goal is to sit down with White House sources, break bread and have a little humor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have to be frank, I took a refresher Heimlich course this week just in case somebody big at the head table caught a bone in the throat. I thought I'd be there to make my mark.

SCULLY: We poke fun at the President. Most of the time we have a comedian.

CARLOS: But really the comedians are teddy bears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every time he gets to a big word, it's like watching a high wire act.

CARLOS: No jokes were made that would bruise egos.

JAY LENO, COMEDIAN: Now, Mr. President, I don't want you to worry about these jokes. I ran every one of them, passed George Tenet. He said, it's a slam dunk. So don't worry. Every joke is a slam dunk tonight.

CARLOS: They were very sure to book someone safe.

CEDRIC THE ENTERTAINER, COMEDIAN: Anybody know where I can get a Bud Light? That's what I want to know. Help me.

DAHM: There was a team of writers that worked on it. Stephen was very involved, obviously. We really were just kind of doing what we did on the show. We weren't trying to, like, burn the room or anything. Anyway.

SILVERMAN: Stephen and Rich Dahm, my fellow head writer, and I went down to D.C. on the train.

SCULLY: You had many members of the President's cabinet in his second term. You had anchors and reporters, a whole host of media celebrities that came to the dinner. Stephen Colbert was on the dais. And of course, you also had President Bush, the first lady, Laura Bush.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, the microphone is yours.

SILVERMAN: And then the show started. And I recall a George Bush impressionist.

BUSH: I believe in bipartisan bipartisanship.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see, it's like this here. We can all come together. Here's a visual. See here? Look here. See there?

DAHM: And it destroyed.

[22:30:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there's a steeple on the door. And look at all the people. You see, they're all happy and wiggling.

DAHM: It was a huge hit. Stephen comes out and he does sort of this first joke. It was like a softball, like, just to lead into what was coming.

COLBERT: Whoever parked 14 black, bulletproof SUVs out front, could you please move them? They're blocking in 14 other black bulletproof SUVs. They need to get out.

DAHM: It didn't get anything. It got kind of nothing. And so Allison and I are looking at each other like, oh, what are we in for?

COLBERT: And tonight, it is my privilege to celebrate this President. Because we're not so different, he and I, we go straight from the gut, right, sir? Every night on my show, "The Colbert Report," I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the no fact zone.

SILVERMAN: It was clear very soon after Stephen started talking that people were uncomfortable with what he was saying.

DAHM: The thing about the White House Correspondents' Dinner is that people look at the President and they see, how is he enjoying it. He did not appear to be enjoying it.

COLBERT: The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday. No matter what happened Tuesday, events can change this man's beliefs never will.

SORESI: It is nerve wracking to tell a joke that's going to make fun of someone and they're sitting next to you. But I think that's important because what do they need compliments? They're the President.

COLBERT: I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The jokes that were at his expense. And there were also jokes at the expense of the media.

COLBERT: Fox News gives you both sides of every story. The President's side and the Vice President's side. But the rest of you, what are you thinking? Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.

TAPPER: It is difficult to go back to that era and think that the news media did its job adequately. And I think Colbert was right to point that out.

COLBERT: Those were good times, as far as we knew.

TAPPER: Everybody was shocked. There were those of us laughing who were shocked at the audacity and the courage and the commitment because he never broke. He maintained "The Colbert Report" persona.

SILVERMAN: Stephen really believes in learning to love the bomb. As far as comedy goes, you have to love those moments when you're really failing.

SORESI: Unless you've done comedy, it really is hard to know the feeling of telling a joke to a room that hates it. But the problem is, like, if you really want to tell a joke that says an audience is full of shit, you got to be ready for them not to laugh.

COLBERT: Members of the White House Correspondents' Association, Madam First Lady, Mr. President, it's been a true honor. Thank you very much. Good night.

SCULLY: You can see it in the video. I'm walking across the podium and then walking President and Mrs. Bush off stage. Karl Rove was just off backstage. So he barked at Karl Rove and said, find out who's responsible for this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Comedy Central Stephen Colbert got decidedly mixed reviews for his mockery of President Bush at last weekend's White House Correspondents statement.

DAHM: I felt like, oh, man, that just didn't connect at all. But it did connect. It connected with the rest of America.

SILVERMAN: YouTube was just becoming a thing. The speech had been broadcast on C Span, and then it started popping up on YouTube and it started to get more and more views.

COLBERT: Events can change this man's beliefs never will.

SILVERMAN: Stephen became kind of a bit of a folk hero at that point.

[22:35:00]

MCCLENNEN: It changed Colbert's popularity overnight because it was so talked about that you had somebody stand so close to Bush and critique him.

COLBERT: Reunleash the media.

MCCLENNEN: There's other parts of what makes Colbert's satire so powerful. He refuses to keep his satire in the space of entertainment. And he's often using it as an intervention directly into politics and directly into trying to get his viewers to do things.

KING: President, you're thinking about it.

COLBERT: Obviously, every boy's thought of it.

CARLOS: When Stephen ran for President in '07, I think it was a culmination of what had started a year before.

MCCLENNEN: That campaign allowed Colbert to educate his viewers in how you get on a ballot.

CROWD: Stephen.

COLBERT: Hello, freedom lovers.

CARLOS: I remember in 2011, he created a Super PAC that got over a million dollars.

MCCLENNEN: He started the Super PAC to try to help educate his viewers into what was wrong with campaign finance.

COLBERT: 50. We got 50. Thank you so much.

CARLOS: This creation, this character had become a movement.

COLBERT: Money equals speech. Any more speech? Throw your speech at me.

FIENBERG: "The Colbert Report" ended in 2014. It ended after nine seasons, after 1,447 episodes. And it had already been announced that he was going over to CBS.

MCCLENNEN: When it was announced that Colbert would take over as host of "The Late Show," a lot of people were curious what would happen with the Colbert persona. Would he do the show in character?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLOS: Oh children, let me weave you a tale. There was a thing called late night television once.

[22:40:00]

Back in the day, in the 1950s, you had these programmers that wanted to sell ads late at night to people before they went to bed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cleaner, whiter, brighter washes than ever before.

CARLOS: And to do that, you thought, OK, we've spent so much money on primetime television, we need something cheap and easy. And so why not just do talk shows, interviews, things like that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: NBC brings you another program with Uncle Jack and some bedtime stories.

CARLOS: Jack Parr, Dick Cabot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really have a terrific show tonight. Johnny Carson.

JOHNNY CARLOS, FORMER TV HOST: Thank you.

CARLOS: These were all kind of late night talkers. Joan Rivers had her own late night show. Arsenio Hall famously had his own at Paramount.

FIENBERG: David Letterman was just about as big as there was in television. The writing staffs he assembled basically became the voice of comedy for the next 25 years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: David Letterman says he is stepping aside. Who could be in line for his chair at CBS?

THOMAS: At "Second City," at "The Daily show," on "The Colbert Report," Stephen had only ever played a character. So "The Late Show" was the first time he was actually able to be himself on TV. And people wondered, would he be able to pull this off?

COLBERT: This show I begin the search for the real Stephen Colbert. I just hope I don't find him on Ashley Madison. FIENBERG: My reaction to the first Stephen Colbert episode of "The Late Show" was disappointed, ambivalence. I think you have to go back and remember how assertively "The Colbert Report" arrived on television. And "The Late Show" came out as a little bit of a -- is this all there is situation?

RAZOWSKY: But those of us who knew him went, just give him some time. He's going to figure it out.

DAHM: Once the 2016 election happened, that kind of changed what the show became.

FIENBERG: You had this prospect of Hillary Clinton and it was going to be a second consecutive, possibly sea changing election from the first African American president to the first female president. And you had Donald Trump. People were accustomed to treating Donald Trump as the guy who sold stuffed crust pizza and was in "Home Alone 2" and "The Apprentice" guy who took pleasure in saying, you're fired. But everybody knew by 2016 that he was a real something.

CARLOS: Stephen had set up this broadcast to kind of like track what was going to happen on election day.

FIENBERG: I think the feeling, the sensibility, let's be perfectly honest, the hope it was a lot of circles, was that it was going to be this repudiation of Donald Trump. But by the end of the night, it's all about him realizing, oh, my goodness, this is not what we planned for.

COLBERT: I think we can agree that this has been an absolutely exhausting, bruising election for everyone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

COLBERT: And it has come to an ending that I did not imagine. Everybody's going to be saying, has America lost its mind?

CARLOS: Yes, I think that he was definitely taken by surprise. You're seeing a real time, minute to minute, understanding of the reality of things.

COLBERT: What that was -- was I was completely emotionally raw. And I think it's important for the audience to know that you're not lying to them or you're not selling them a bill of goods. It doesn't mean, like every night's a confession. It just means there's some emotional truth to what you're talk.

COOPER: I mean, that camera is a little piece of glass, and I think it transmits truth and authenticity. People know who's full of shit and who's not.

COLBERT: Right. And at that moment, I had, you know, I just ran out of bullshit.

FIENBERG: It really was the first time that we saw kind of without the filter, what he could be. And that, to me, feels like a clear turning point.

COLBERT: By Inauguration Day, people, I think, were hungry for someone talking about what was happening on a daily basis immediately.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The Late Show" soon became number one in the ratings and sustained that for nine seasons.

DAHM: When you're seeing all the insane things that are coming out of this administration, you start to feel like you're going crazy. And to be able to hear someone make jokes about just makes it easier to deal with.

TRUMP: Mexico in some form. And there are many different forms will reimburse us, and they will reimburse us for the cost of the wall.

MCCLENNEN: Trump talked about building a wall. Colbert decides to bring on experts, and he says, OK, how do we do it? Can it be done?

COLBERT: Hi, is this Mexico?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Can I help you?

COLBERT: Yes, Hi, this is Stephen Colbert from "The Late Show" at CBS. We got a rough number, about $2 trillion to build the border wall. And I was wondering if you had that in petty cash right now?

[22:45:02]

MCCLENNEN: It was funny, but it was also informative. And it really, really helped expose the flaws in what Trump was saying.

TAPPER: Comedy based in outrage is always at least potentially stronger. And Stephen was very outraged by Donald Trump.

COLBERT: You're not the POTUS, you're the BLOATUS. You're the glutton with the button. You're a regular gorge Washington, you're the presidents, but you're turning into a real pricktator.

TAPPER: No leader likes being mocked. The general rule is don't let them know that it bothers you. But Donald Trump threw that out.

TRUMP: The guy at CBS is -- what a low life. What a low life.

TAPPER: And at some point during his first term, he realized that the Federal Communications Commission actually has power over what airs on the broadcast networks. And he started to suggest that he could use the authority of the federal government to punish people who make fun of him for a living.

MCCLENNEN: So one of the things that happens in the second term is not that Trump has less thin skin and not that Trump doesn't complain. It's that he finds a new lever he can use to apply pressure, and that is mergers.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Paramount has been trying for months to complete a lucrative merger with Skydance Media, a deal that would require approval from the Trump administration.

FIENBERG: In July of 2025, with the CBS-Paramount-Skydance merger hovering on the horizon, CBS settled with Donald Trump for $16 million related to a 60 Minutes interview.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump sued Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris during last year's presidential race. He claimed it was edited to make his rival look good.

TAPPER: I don't know one legal expert that thought that case was going to work out for Donald Trump.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: That has led to widespread speculation that Paramount was willing to cut this settlement deal. In fact, eager to cut this deal in order to get the Trump administration to bless the merger.

MCCLENNEN: Colbert, in classic Colbert fashion, goes on his show and criticizes CBS.

COLBERT: Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bride.

MCCLENNEN: It would be three days before he found out that his show was canceled.

DAHM: I couldn't believe, like, his show was number one. He actually spoke about it the day that the news was announced.

COLBERT: The network will be ending "The Late Show" in May, and -- it's the end of "The Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced.

FIENBERG: He's still trying to cope and figure it out himself. But he also somewhat wanted to underline the CBS message that this was about a sea change in late night. CBS put out a press release saying this is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.

Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult. We love him, he's wildly successful. He's on the Pantheon. Huzzah. Purely financial decision.

CARLOS: Yes, late night television is expensive. The host gets paid a lot.

MCCLENNEN: They have huge teams, a beautiful theater in midtown Manhattan. But if it had really been about money, then CBS would have given Colbert a chance to run a show that was less costly.

TAPPER: There were two things that were fishy about the announcement. One is normally such an announcement would be made towards the end of a season, not the summer before. Second of all, this announcement was made days before the merger went through. So the timing made it really suspicious.

FIENBERG: The next day, Donald Trump was on Truth Social doing his Donald Trump thing, being, ha-ha, no talents. Stephen Colbert. And guess what, Jimmy Kimmel, you're next.

TRUMP: Colbert has no talent. I mean, I could take anybody here. I could go outside on the beautiful streets and pick a couple of people that do just as well or better they get higher ratings than he did. He's got no talent. Fallon has no talent. Kimmel has no talent. They're next.

[22:50:00]

TAPPER: The question that I think about when I think about the cancellation of Colbert's show is do we want to live in a country where mocking a president might have an impact on whether or not you have a career?

CROWD: Colbert, stay.

TAPPER: If we live in a society that doesn't allow that mockery, not because of financial reasons or the economics of late night, which I understand, but because a president is thin skinned and he's protected by a praetorian guard of government officials who are willing to exercise their power to shut up critics, then we are heading down a dangerous path.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THOMAS: Satire is never more important than in times of strife, and I think we're certainly in one of those times now.

MCCLENNEN: There's no question that we're in crisis. I think that it's unsurprising that we're seeing a huge amount of political comedy aimed at helping the public make sense of it.

CARLOS: The comedian's job now is to say, you're not crazy. This isn't normal. We're going to point this out.

TAPPER: Comedians and journalists are like the front line when it comes to the ability to criticize people in power. And if they are chilled into silence, then it will have an impact on the public as well.

[22:55:00]

CARLOS: But just as long as comedians keep using their comedic skills to speak truth to power, we going to be alright. But it won't be easy.

DAHM: If you can make jokes about it, you can control it in a way. So even if you're feeling the world is chaos, your power is in those jokes. THOMAS: American satire is going strong. It's just not going as strong as it once was on network television.

MCCLENNEN: The menu of satire is so broad. It's on TikTok, it's on YouTube.

CARLOS: Ziwei (ph) is a contemporary version of Stephen Colbert. Because she's in character, she will not break character.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You said that you believed that Gracie Mansion was haunted.

ERIC ADAMS, FORMER NEW YORK MAYOR: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are the ghosts saying to you.

CARLOS: Once she turns on, like you're on the hot seat.

FIENBERG: Like you watch her interview with George Santos. That's as close to seeing George Santos off script as you'll ever get.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you do decide to have a child, would you rather have a gay son, thought daughter, or pathological liar?

GEORGE SANTOS, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: I will have a child, and I will accept my kid in any way, shape or form they come. And the best I can do is teach my child to be better than me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Love that. And do you plan to adopt black?

SANTOS: I wouldn't be opposed to it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that's exactly what Stephen was doing.

FIENBERG: The most important thing about "The Colbert Report" is that there was legitimate journalism being done on that show.

SORESI: I like Adam Friedland. He knocked people off their feet. When Adam Friedland had Ritchie Torres on, it was so refreshing because you had someone who was such a politician and you had someone kind of imploring them to discuss Palestine in a way that you just don't see in mainstream news.

REP. RITCHIE TORRES (D-NY): You're blaming Israel for Holocaust denial?

ADAM FRIEDLAND, COMEDIAN: I'm blaming our -- I'm blaming our government for supporting a genocide. But it is unfathomable in my heart, and it breaks my heart that we could be capable of it.

TORRES: I think we should move on.

FRIEDLAND: Why is that?

TORRES: We just fundamentally disagree. FRIEDLAND: So I don't think that -- I think I'm talking to you, like, about where I come from and that it feels different. And maybe I have a different perspective.

TORRES: You have a different perspective.

FIENBERG: I think the digital age has allowed for comedy and satire to become more and more and more personal, but we become more and more siloed as the media that we consume becomes more and more directed exclusively at us.

SORESI: I think every comedian in this world of algorithms, where people are able to really curate their fans. Are you pandering or are you being a comedian first? I think it's the question I ask myself all the time. And a comedian has to accept that they can only do so much.

Their only power is to make people laugh. And the moment you reach for more, you're no longer a comedian first.

MCCLENNEN: One of the things that makes satire different is that the laugh is not the goal. The goal of satire is to change how people think and to motivate them to act. Satire simply transforms to the moment that it's in.

Stephen was fearless. He's even more fearless now. Now that we can't find him five days a week, people are going to look for him.

ADAMS: He's gutsy. He's just really gutsy. Way stronger now than he was then. Don't make me cry. No, I'm sad.

COLBERT: People actually know what they're doing.

RAZOWSKY: We're losing the person that we go to at the end of the day to tell us what happened to very often give us a satirical spin to it. And most importantly, to not feel that we're alone. And so what is going to be lost? That is going to be lost. That voice that says, I got a spine. Come with me. You're not alone.

CARLOS: But I don't think that's the last we've heard of Stephen.

MCCLENNEN: Stephen Colbert isn't even close to done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Colbert.

MCCLENNEN: He's already left such an extraordinary mark on U.S. political comedy, and he's only just now entering his next act.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST" You're in the CNN newsroom. Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Dean here in New York. We are following breaking news out of Washington where the Secret Service now says the alleged gunman who fired shots near the White House this evening has died. During the back and forth between the suspect and Secret Service, a

bystander was also hit by gunfire. That person remains in critical condition. Secret Service saying the incident is under investigation.

[23:00:03]

CNN correspondents Julia Benbrook and Brian Todd are joining us now with the details. Brian, you're there --