Stephen Colbert says “narcissist” Donald Trump “does not appear to care if the entire world burns”
In recent months, Stephen Colbert has made increasingly political statements on The Late Show; with the show’s end in sight, Colbert has called out “narcissist” Donald Trump.
Last July, it was announced that Colbert’s long-running television show would be axed this May. Therein entailed much debate around the reason for the cancellation, with CBS revealing that they were losing millions of dollars a year on the show.
However, at the time Colbert admitted that he could understand why viewers might deem the cancellation “fishy” following his anti-Trump messaging and, concurrently, CBS’s legal settlement with Donald Trump and its merger with the networks Paramount Global and Skydance.
Though political considerations characterise the show’s ending, Colbert has since revealed that he didn’t set out to engage with political discourse.
As per The New York Times, Colbert admitted that in the first instance, “It was my instinct to be less topical, because I didn’t want to have to engage with what I saw was an increasingly contentious public discourse. And I thought, aren’t there other ways to have fun with the audience?”
In 2016, he leaned into political comedy and, almost instantly, received rave reviews. He reflected, “I was like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, or is it some other movie? He buried his guns. And I’m like, you know, I buried those damn guns.”
Colbert added that one of the producers, Paul Dinello, had a conversation with him about political messaging: “He said, ‘You’re having fun, and people love to see that’. And I said, ‘But that means I got to go dig up the guns’. And he says, ‘Buddy, that’s the part the audience wants to see’.”
As such, Colbert was asked why the Federal Communications Commission and the Trump administration are so focused on taking down late-night talk-show hosts. “Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity,” he responded.
He added of his profession, “Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them.”
Specifically calling out the President, Colbert then added, “I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican. 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.”
He went on, “That’s not a partisan position. 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.”