America Waves Goodbye To Stephen Colbert As Trump Lands A Final Parting Shot

After a long, painful goodbye, Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” on CBS gasped its final dying breath on Thursday from the historic Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City.

As many critics are saying, it’s about time.

President Donald Trump, the main subject of Colbert’s yearslong tirades, said Friday morning, “Colbert is finally finished at CBS. 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!”

“Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts,” Trump added. “Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace!”

During the last episode, Colbert skipped the monologue when he walked out and addressed the audience, saying, “This show…has been a joy for us to do for you. In fact, we call this show the ‘joy machine,’ all right? …We call it the joy machine because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.” 

The host continued, “On night one of ‘The Colbert Report’ back in the day, I said, ‘Anyone can read the news to you, I promise to feel the news at you.’ And I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you. And I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”

The hyper-partisan late night host brought former Beatles band member Paul McCartney on as his final guest. McCartney gave Colbert a framed, signed photo of The Beatles playing during “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.

“Wow,” Colbert said, joking that the caption said, “To Stephen, you’re better than The Beatles, Paul McCartney.”

The show ended with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jon Stewart, and Andy Cohen helping Colbert transition through a wormhole portal that opened to swallow the show. McCartney was tasked with cutting power from the control room, then the wormhole turned the Ed Sullivan Theater into a miniature version of itself inside a snow globe. 

And then it was over.

CBS announced last summer that “The Late Show,” which began in 1993, would conclude this year and not be replaced with a traditional late-night format.

“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,” the network said at the time.

Colbert followed the announcement with an expletive-laced monologue in which he blasted President Donald Trump and CBS. During the segment, Colbert referenced Paramount Global, CBS’s parent company, noting that it paid Trump a $16 million settlement after being accused of election interference.

CBS Entertainment CEO George Cheeks later reiterated that the show had been losing “significant” amounts of money, describing the losses as being in the “tens of millions of dollars.”

“At the end of the day, it just wasn’t sustainable to continue,” Cheeks said.

Colbert became more reflective in later interviews, blaming changing audiences rather than his political rants on the show’s demise.

“It’s possible that two things can be true,” Colbert told The New York Times during an April interview. “Broadcast can be in trouble. They cannot monetize because of things like YouTube, because of the competition of streaming. They’ve got the books, and I do not have any desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work for them anymore. But less than two years before they called to say it’s over, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.”

CBS will replace “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” with a new late-night program block led by comedian Byron Allen. It’s described as being politically neutral and appropriate for all ages.

“I tell the comedians we’re shooting ‘I Love Lucy,’” Allen told The Los Angeles Times in 2025. “Something that’s evergreen. So I don’t want to hear any political humor. Just be funny, family-friendly, and advertiser-friendly.”