A CNN panel took a wild turn as MAGA guests melted down over Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show.
The host ended his 11-year run on the CBS late-night show on Thursday night after the network, which has pivoted to a Trump-friendly stance, announced the show’s cancellation in July last year.
The axing came just three days after its host, 62, slammed the network’s MAGA-friendly parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump.
The final show and Trump’s wider crackdown on dissent provided fodder for a spirited debate on CNN’s NewsNight on Thursday evening.
MAGA pundit Ben Ferguson suggested that there was no interference from Trump, who often spoke of his disdain for Colbert and his happiness that the show had been canceled.
“They lost money. I mean, part of me laughs at the idea that this got canceled because of Trump. No, it got canceled because the dynamics of late-night TV have changed,” Ferguson claimed.
He immediately went on the defensive as the other panelists pushed back. Journalist and commentator Charles Blow emerged from the din with a metaphor that prompted a laugh from Ferguson.
“Part of the authoritarian ethos is that God shall not be mocked. And they often go after comedians. They go after people who mock them. And that is what Trump has done, and he has encouraged the entire apparatus of the government to go after people who mock him. Now, are there financial concerns?” he said, as Ferguson chimed in, “Yeah!”
“You can stop for a second,” Blow snapped back, increasing the tension.
“Financial concerns, the times have changed, all that may be true. But you cannot divorce the fact that the president himself has been on a rampage against these comedians because he wants them off the air and has said as much,” he went on.
Conservative journalist Caroline Downey suggested that the show has ended because Colbert is “not funny.”
“So, because you didn’t laugh, they’re not funny?” Blow asked.
She also noted that the show had suffered financially and lost advertising revenue, but Blow was concerned about Downey using her opinion of his funniness as a dictator for whether he should be canceled.
Ferguson and Downey appear to be rankled by Colbert’s deriding of Trump in his monologues. “Johnny Carson would never weigh into politics!” Downey declared.
Blow called this “an absolute lie” as the crosstalk and shouting continued.
Jessica Dean, stepping in for regular host Abby Phillip, tried to restore a semblance of calm but ended up throwing gasoline on the fire when she asked whether it was “appropriate” how Trump was “aggressively going after television networks and media organizations.”
Terry Moran, former Senior National Correspondent at ABC News, argued that FCC Chair Brendan Carr was Trump’s “henchman” who targeted dissenting networks and hosts.
Downey and Ferguson scrambled to defend the president, rolling out the usual MAGA talking points—Colbert’s liberal bias, Colbert and other late-night hosts are mean and unfair about Trump and his administration—in a raucous style. The shouting became so intense that Dean had to interject, and she was forced to cut the segment short.
“We got to leave it there! We got to leave it there!” she demanded, moving the show on.
Meanwhile, in a bitter Truth Social message posted just before 2 a.m., Trump took a parting shot at Colbert.
“Colbert is finally finished at CBS,” Trump wrote. “Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he’s finally gone!”
