Donald Trump told to go ‘f**k himself’ by TV host after President gloats over show cancellation
US President Donald Trump has been told to go and “f**k yourself” by TV host Stephen Colbert during an episode of his late-night show last night.
Colbert and Trump are publicly feuding after the President publicly goaded the host upon hearing the news that CBS pulled the plug on his show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, after airing for 33 years.
The show has been cancelled amid a political firestorm after CBS’s parent company, Paramount, paid a $16million settlement to Trump over another flagship CBS show, 60 Minutes, which Colbert described as a “big fat bribe”.
Paramount axed the late-night talk show just three days later, prompting Trump to revel in the firing of one of his biggest critics, posting on his Truth Social platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”
Colbert pulled no punches on his first show back on air on Monday night, telling the President to go and “f**k himself”, and that “the gloves are off”, before delivering a torrid address to his live audience.
“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,” Colbert raged.
“I mean, obviously, CBS saw my upper lip and boom, cancelled. Coincidence? Oh, I think not. This is worse than fascism. This is stachism.”
The Guardian reports that in an anonymous leak over the weekend, CBS appeared to suggest The Late Show lost $40million to $50million last year.
“Where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16m?” he joked in response to the alleged losses. “Oh yeah.”
The firing came days after Colbert lambasted Paramount for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, over the President’s claims that CBS News deceptively edited an interview with the then-presidential democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
Trump filed the lawsuit last October, claiming the interview had the intention to “tip the scales in favour of the Democratic Party”.
Paramount agreed to settle the suit, but the money would need to be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, not paid to him “directly or indirectly”
The settlement with Trump coincided with Paramount seeking approval for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media, which Colbert described as “a big fat bribe”.
In an apparent gesture of goodwill, Colbert’s fellow late-night show hosts John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon, sat in the audience for Monday night’s show taping.
They were joined by other journalists and famous faces, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper, and Christopher McDonald.
Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, delivered a scathing attack of his own at Paramount’s decision to cancel Colbert’s show.
“The fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number-one rated late-night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder.
“Was this purely financial, or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8bn merger?”
Stewart then antagonised the audience into chanting “go f**k yourselves”, directed at the corporations who he claims are showing undue obedience to Donald Trump.
Over on NBC’s The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon hinted that viewers were planning to boycott the network in response to the plug being pulled: “CBS could lose millions of viewers, plus tens of thousands watching on Paramount+,” he said in a thinly veiled joke.
In a statement, CBS stated that the cancellation was “purely a financial decision”.
Adam Schiff, a Democratic Senator who was previously a guest on The Late Show, posted to X: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
Protests erupted outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York City last week , where the show is taped. Demonstrators carried signs saying “CBS Sucks” and “Colbert Stays! Trump Must Go!”.
Colbert has been one of Trump’s biggest critics since he took over from David Letterman in 2015. Colbert’s final shows conclude in May 2026.