Mid-level MAGA media voices have melted down over the attention paid to Stephen Colbert’s final episode of The Late Show.
Colbert wound up his 11-year-run on the CBS late-night show on Thursday night, after the network controversially axed the long-running program last July.
The cancellation came just three days after Colbert, 62, slammed the network’s MAGA-friendly parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump.
Stephen Colbert’s TV show ended on Thursday night. / Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles: it’s big, fat bribe,” Colbert said on his show at the time.
In a bitter Truth Social message posted just before 2 a.m., Trump took a parting shot at the host following his finale airing.
“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!”
The demise of Colbert’s show gave MAGA mouthpieces on cable fresh ammunition to gloat.
Ahead of the finale, Fox News’ deliberate comedian Greg Gutfeld joked that Colbert was now his Uber driver.
Greg Gutfield makes a joke about Stephen Colbert. / screen grab
Newsmax host Rob Finnerty dedicated four minutes to complaining about Colbert on his Thursday show.
“This show was never about comedy,” Finnerty claimed of The Late Show.
“To be clear, I’ve got no issue with late-night hosts making fun of politicians or Donald Trump. But guess what? It’s gotta go both ways, and it never does. Stephen Colbert could literally take his show to celebrity.land tomorrow night and not change a thing, and it would fit right in.”
Finnerty said when Colbert’s program started on CBS, “Obama was president, woke was in,” and claimed The Late Show “never rated.”
However, The Late Show held the top spot in total viewers among late-night shows for nine consecutive seasons and led the crucial advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic for seven.
Rob Finnerty slams Stephen Colbert on Newsmax. / screen grab
In the first quarter of 2026, Colbert maintained an impressive average of 2.7 million viewers, peaking at 2.8 million during a recent episode featuring other hosts.
While TV ratings are dropping overall, The Late Show’s YouTube channel has over 10 million subscribers, tapping into an audience who don’t watch broadcast television. Newsmax has 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
Finnerty also diagnosed Colbert as “the first late-night host to come down with a wonderful affliction called Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Newsmax host Bob Brooks is not a Colbert fan. / screen grab
The Newsmax host said Colbert “blames Donald Trump, which has become like the mantra for the left. Something bad happens, and the excuse is always, yeah, but Trump, somehow it’s always Donald Trump’s fault.”
Finnerty did admit, “Stephen Colbert has made me laugh. I don’t know when, but I guarantee you over the last 11 years, he has made me laugh. So I’m not just gonna be, like, dishonest.”
Another Newsmax host, Bob Brooks, also took the chance to slam Colbert on Thursday.
“Well, thank God we don’t have to listen and watch that guy anymore,” Brooks said after Colbert’s final show.
Calling him a “Democrat mouthpiece posing as a late night comedian,” Brooks said the “liberal media is all in mourning” over his show ending.
Quoting a headline from The New York Times that said The Late Show’s axing is the end of an era, Brooks said, “Yeah, it’s the end of an era for non-stop Democrat propaganda, Trump-bashing on CBS late-night, because that’s all it was.”
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