Stephen Colbert is pushing back on the idea that his jokes about President Donald Trump stem from Democrat vs. Republican issues.
“I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican,” the late night show host, 61, said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who is only working for his own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns. That’s not a partisan position.”
He continued: “I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just roughing the ref. And we don’t even want to be refs, but they perceive us as refs. I reject the partisan description. Partisan means you’re never, ever going to make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison of how fertile the fields are.”
Trump often criticizes late night hosts including Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart. On Monday, the President called for Kimmel to be “immediately fired” for joking that Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow” days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
After Trump’s calls for ABC to take action against Kimmel, the National Religious Board filed a complaint against the network Tuesday with the Federal Communications Commission.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has been transparent about his focus on how talk show hosts discuss Trump. He has cracked down on shows like ABC’s The View over the equal time rule, which requires that broadcasters give the same amount of airtime to competing political candidates if requested.
Earlier this year, Carr clashed with Colbert after the host said CBS told him not to air an interview with a Democratic Senate candidate from Texas. The network later said Colbert “was not prohibited” from running the interview, but rather advised that doing so could trigger the equal time rule.
Colbert told the Times that the Trump administration and the FCC are critical of him because he is not afraid to call them out.
“Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity,” Colbert said. “Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them.” He added, “I think it might be upsetting that we really do not live in their world of principalities and powers.”
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which often features jokes aimed at Trump, will air its last episode in May, CBS announced last year. The network claimed the move was “purely a financial decision.” However, the cancellation sparked speculation that the decision could have potentially been made to appease Trump because Paramount, which owns CBS, relied on the presidentially-controlled FCC to approve its $8 billion sale to Skydance.
Colbert said in the Times interview that he found the cancellation surprising because CBS had encouraged him to sign a longer contract in 2023.
