As conservative activists call on CBS to #FireColbert, the network reports that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has just scored its best overnight rating since the week the show premiere in September 2015. Thursday night's episode scored a 2.5 rating, far surpassing NBC's Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, which came in at 1.9. According to CBS, this number marked a 19% increase from the previous Thursday and a 32% bump from the same night last year. The host briefly addressed the controversy over his joke, which implied a sexual relationship between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday night's show. While he said he does not "regret" making the joke, Colbert said that if he could do it over, "I would change a few words that were cruder than they needed to be. Now I’m not going to repeat the phrase, but I just want to say, for the record, life is short, and anybody who expresses their love for another person in their own way, is to me, an American hero."

— Matt Wilstein