Colbert Blames Producer For Turning ‘Late Show’ Into Left-Wing Lecture Hour

Late night host Stephen Colbert insists that he’s only an insufferable partisan hack because a producer told him to be one.

The host of “The Late Show,” which will be airing its final episode next month after years of losing money and falling ratings, said as much during a recently published interview with The New York Times. Colbert said that he was “discouraged by the network from being topical” when he first joined as host.

“It was my instinct to be less topical, because I didn’t want to have to engage with what I saw was an increasingly contentious public discourse,” Colbert told the outlet. “And I thought, ‘Aren’t there other ways to have fun with the audience?’”

The comedian gained notoriety hosting the Comedy Central news satire show “The Colbert Report” from 2005 until 2014. He took over hosting “The Late Show” in 2015 following David Letterman’s departure.  

Colbert said the 2016 party conventions were a turning point for him to return to his political background in his new gig, with the outlet claiming that ratings “soared” after he started outright Trump bashing.

“Clint Eastwood in ‘Unforgiven,’ or is it some other movie? He buried his guns. And I’m like, you know, I buried those damn guns. I was talking to Paul Dinello — he’s one of my oldest friends and one of my producers here — and he’s like, ‘You’re having fun, and people love to see that.’ And I said, ‘But that means I got to go dig up the guns.’ And he says, ‘Buddy, that’s the part the audience wants to see.’”

Colbert has been vocally opposed to CBS deciding to pull the plug on the show, which they say was “purely a financial decision.” One report stated that the program was losing $40 million annually.

The political commentator went on to blame the format rather than the content of the show.

“It’s possible that two things can be true,” Colbert told NYT. “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.”

The last episode of “The Late Show” will air on May 21.