Jon Stewart's Blistering Defense of Colbert Amid Late Night Upheaval | The Daily Show Host Takes On CBS
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Jon Stewart's Blistering Defense of Colbert Amid Late Night Upheaval | The Daily Show Host Takes On CBS
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About this listen
The past week for me Jon Stewart has been a blizzard of headlines and bigger-than-usual spotlights thanks to turbulence in the late night landscape. I have been front and center since CBS announced it was ending The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2026 as Paramount moves forward with its $8 billion merger with Skydance. In my Daily Show monologues I openly questioned whether Colbert’s cancellation was truly just a financial decision as announced or whether it signaled corporations buckling under political pressure, especially with Colbert’s well-known opposition to Trump. On air I waxed nostalgic about my and Stephen’s early days as Daily Show alumni, expressing both admiration for his turn as the number one late night host and open exasperation at CBS and media companies who “protect their bottom line” by silencing dissent, punctuating my thoughts with an on-air gospel choir and a direct message to those companies using the words “go f— yourself”—which became a widely-shared clip as reported by the Los Angeles Times and recapped with glee across social media.
Comedy, it turns out, wasn’t done fighting back. As reported by Ideastream, my remarks topped off a week in which South Park’s season premiere delivered pointed satire of the Colbert cancellation, the Paramount-Skydance deal, the climate of corporate self-censorship, and even swept in Donald Trump’s ongoing legal distractions.
The media industry also turned to me to host an exclusive interview with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times, who announced on my show that he intends to take the paper public within the year—a significant moment for both media transparency and my own biographical role as a platform for industry-shifting news.
Elsewhere on my Daily Show platforms and Instagram, sharp clips of my rants against CBS and reflections on late night’s precarious future have ricocheted across social, cutting through the news cycle with praise for my candor—one viral Instagram reel described my monologue as “blistering” and another captured my defense of Colbert as I took up a “large chunk of my opening” for that very purpose, as observed by USA Today’s culture vertical.
As ever, I haven’t lost my willingness to tangle with politics or absurdity. HuffPost covered my latest reaction to Donald Trump’s bizarre way of denying Epstein connections—Trump called going to Epstein’s island “a privilege”—prompting my genuinely stunned response on The Daily Show: “What the fuck?” That moment’s wide distribution online, along with recurring appearances by me and colleagues in late night montages and kiss-cam spoofs, signals I remain at the crux of both political satire and media commentary.
Biographically, the long-term significance here is clear: I have reclaimed my reputation as late-night’s truth-teller and corporate critic, providing both comic relief and sharp industry analysis at a moment when late-night TV itself faces existential questions. As for my own future, I told the Weekly Show podcast I haven’t heard about The Daily Show’s cancellation and joked I’d survive any shake-up. For now, the stage—and the fight—is still mine.
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