Trump’s Ugly New Attack on Colbert Reveals a Darker Side to Firing

As you’ve heard, CBS has ended The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Troublingly, this comes just after Paramount, which owns CBS, settled President Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against it by paying out $16 million. Only days before the firing, Colbert called the deal a “big fat bribe.” Now Trump has just praised the firing in a vile new attack on Colbert. Trump laughably insisted that Colbert has no talent and can’t measure up to Fox News hosts (who praise Trump relentlessly). We think Trump deliberately wants us to think CBS fired Colbert precisely because CBS hoped it would curry favor with Trump, in order to enhance impressions of his authoritarian power. We talked about all this with Michael Sozan of the Center for American Progress, author of a good piece excoriating Paramount’s settlement with Trump. We discussed why Trump makes his corrupt bullying of the media explicit, how he’s modeling this on autocratic regimes abroad, and what we should all do in response. Listen to this episode here.