Jay Weber Show transcript 7-23-25
I can’t believe we’re still talking about Stephen Colbert’s firing several days later-
But he and his closest friends in comedy and politics are now working to make him a martyr.
Monday was his first one back-following the news CBS was canceling his show in May...and Colbert used it to give a profanity-laced monolog that amounted to him.... casting himself as some sort of martyred truth-teller.
Even though CBS made it clear his show is losing money and it was a financial decision- Colbert and his guests have spent the last several days insisting that Colbert was a ‘leftist telling truth to power’...and that’s why he was canceled.
This evil corporate overlords just need to shut him up...to satisfy trump...is the narrative they’re going with.
the problem is- that’s simply not true.
‘math’ and ‘changing viewing habits’ got him fired-plain and simple.
But listen to a snippet of Colbert’s Monday monolog...in which he’s setting up this ‘I’m being martyred’ narrative.
And please-
Please note how he glosses over the fact that his show has been losing gobs of money for CBS over the last 6 years, at least.
COLBERT: “CBS, our network, CBS, who I want to reiterate, have always been great partners, put out a statement saying very nice things about me and about the show, and thank you to them for that. They clarified that the cancellation was 'purely a financial decision.' But how could it be purely a financial decision if 'The Late Show' is number one in the ratings?
Yeah. It’s confusing. A lot of folks are asking that question, mainly my staff’s parents and spouses. Well, over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak, saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year. $40 million’s a big number. I could see us losing $24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other 16 mill — oh, yeah.”
That’s a whacky reference to the sixteen million dollars that paramount just paid Donald trump to settle a slander lawsuit he brought against CBS news and 60-minutes.
Colbert thinks it’s clever to use that to try to excuse away his show’s losses.
The problem is- he can’t excuse away his show’s losses.
He couched it in as many jokes as he could...but...it should be lost on ‘no one’ that Colbert had to admit to his show’s major financial losses....as to why he’s being canceled.
Also- just fyi?He claimed he couldn’t see how they were losing money when they were number one in the ratings-and his chimp’s cheered-
But a) he’s not number one in the late-night ratings: Greg Gutfeld is-and is doing a smarter show on a much smaller budget-
And b) being number one in a failing industry isn’t all that impressive. These late-night network shows are dead. Changing viewing habits killed them. Fewer than two-million people are watching Colbert on any given night-in a nation of more than 330-million people.
This is like Colbert bragging that he’s the number one ‘buggy whip’ maker in 1940. But dude...no one’s traveling by buggy, anymore.
So- you don’t need to look very hard to shatter this ‘martyred truthteller’ narrative, even if Colbert and his fellow late-night hosts are ‘humping it hard’ to their audiences this week.
I’ll give you something else to watch for, as well: does Colbert now go- so hard and nasty- at trump and the half of the country who supports him-that CBS feels the need to cancel him early?
Know what I mean? Colbert’s contract is obviously up in May...so that’s when CBS said they will end the show.
But- with ‘nothing to lose’ between now and may-does Stephen Colbert get so overly angry and nasty in his ..quote...comedy.... that CBS execs just say...okay. That’s enough...and pull the show off the air over the next few weeks?
That’s what I’ll watch for now, because if Colbert’s ego cannot handle this-
I’d think that- if Colbert can make it to Labor Day without completely embarrassing himself, and the network, so he’s pulled early-
Well then- he probably makes it to May.... or at least at the end of the year.
It could also be that the incoming SkyDance and Paramount execs will look to find an off-ramp for him during the holidays. I’ll be surprised if Colbert’s show is still on the air, late night, after Christmas.
I likened this to Colin Kaepernick on social media yesterday: once NFL defenses had figured him out- he was a sucky and ineffective quarterback.
And so, no other NFL teams wanted him.
But to preserve his own ego...Kaepernick leapt to play the racial martyr.
That was -hard to do -in a league that’s probably 80 percent black...but...he tried, less.Most of the owners are white, after all.
And because there’s always ‘some’ group of fools who will rush to follow the racism bus.... Kaepernick got all sorts of blind support from the race baiters.
But Kaepernick was forced to leave the NFL because he sucked-not because he was ‘half black’.And everyone who didn’t have a political ax to grind knew it-
Same here: outside of the most indoctrinated east and west coast circles- no one in America- thinks that Stephen Colbert is losing his show because he ‘spoke truth to power’ about Trump or CBS.
But that’s not going to stop the left-wingers from pushing it, obviously. If they don’t have lies and gaslighting...they don’t have ‘nothing’...on the left these days.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > Stephen Colbert tries to make himself out as a martyred truth-teller