Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | February 18, 2026
This is the energy we all hoped for in the final months of The Late Show. On Monday night’s show, Colbert took CBS to task for refusing to air an interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, citing the equal-time rule that the FCC has decided it might enforce against late-night talk shows (CBS is preemptively enforcing it). Ultimately, Colbert put the interview on YouTube, where it became one of the most-watched The Late Show interviews ever, with over 5 million views as of this morning. It also helped the candidate raise more than $2.5 million in the last 24 hours.
Then yesterday, CBS released a statement denying that the Talarico interview was banned, saying instead that they offered The Late Show “options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. The Late Show decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”
That statement, according to Colbert on last night’s episode, was “crap.”
“This statement, it’s a surprisingly small piece of paper considering how many butts it’s trying to cover,” Colbert said, adding: “Here’s where I do want to tell the lawyers how to do their jobs: they know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air, whether it’s about equal time or an image of frogs having sex … they told us the language they wanted me to use to describe that equal-time exception, and I used that language, so I don’t even know what this [statement] is about.”
“For the record, I’m not even mad,” he continued. “I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network … I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies. For the lawyers to release this without talking to me is really surprising. I don’t even know what to do with this crap.”
Colbert then put the statement in a doggy poop bag.
There are 92 days until The Late Show ends. I hope Stephen Colbert makes every single one of them hell for CBS lawyers and David Ellison.
