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      South Park has become the most important TV show of the Trump 2.0 era | Jesse Hassenger

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      I’ll admit it: I’m more of a Simpsons guy than a South Park guy. Nothing really against those South Park guys – I’ve caught plenty of episodes over its astonishing near-30-year run, and loved the 1999 big-screen movie. But while I haven’t always maintained clockwork viewership of The Simpsons, either, those characters have proved durable enough to revive my interest in episodes old and new. South Park has a thinner bench by comparison, and as the show itself astutely pointed out years ago, it’s difficult for a satirically minded animated sitcom to explore ground that The Simpsons hasn’t covered already. South Park’s political bent, too, has often seemed less varied than the warmer (but still sometimes cutting) social ribbing of Matt Groening’s signature show. It’s a fine line between omnidirectional satire and libertarian crankiness.And yet the 27th season of South Park has accomplished something vanishingly few of its peers, whether in animation or topical comedy, have been able to do: getting laughs taking shots at the second Trump administration. It’s not that the White House is beyond reproach. Quite the opposite problem, much-documented: the Donald Trump cabal is so outsized in its stupidity and cruelty that it’s hard to distend it into a “funny” caricature, even a bleak one. In Trump’s second term, it has only gotten bleaker; jokes that were worn out by the end of 2020 are getting retold with a nasty vengeance, and the bar for cathartic laughter has been raised considerably.For a comedy fan, this winds up translating to an aversion. The occasional shots taken by The Simpsons somehow don’t land as squarely as they did when aimed at presidents I liked much, much more. I watch Saturday Night Live every week, and mostly dread James Austin Johnson’s accurate but ultimately defanged impression. (Some weeks, Johnson himself seems bummed out to be doing it.) I respect the hell out of Stephen Colbert, but I have never sought out his Trump commentary; I don’t need any more clapter – the reaction encouraged by comedy that wants your approval more than your laughter – in my life. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seemed to agree; Parker’s 2017 announcement that they’d grown bored of taking shots at Trump – then barely into his first presidential term – was one of the show’s many controversies over the years.So how is it that South Park’s revived anti-Trump blows this season have managed to land? A big part of it is precisely Stone and Parker’s allergy to clapter and the grandstanding that inspires it. They obviously resent anything they read as putting on airs and sometimes in the past, this came across as its own form of preachiness, with “everybody chill”-style speeches at an episode’s end that would secretly sound just as prescriptive as the self-righteousness they wanted to send up. With their most recent Trump parody, though, there isn’t much moralizing – just gratifyingly mean caricatures of deserving figures such as Trump, JD Vance and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem. Some (not all) of their past roastings have verged on point-and-laugh bullying; here are targets worthy of that derision.Some of this derision speaks through the language of South Park itself. Trump isn’t vocally or visually imitated; he’s depicted in a series of repurposed photos, with the same voice and animation technique that Parker and Stone used to bring Saddam Hussein to life in the South Park movie. He’s also given the same sexual partner: a muscled-up and put-upon version of Satan, who has found himself in another toxic relationship. Calling Trump a wannabe dictator doesn’t break new ground, but there’s something satisfying in Stone and Parker using their personal toolkit to draw a line between Trump and Hussein; if they thought it was a histrionic comparison, they’d be making fun of it instead of making it. Similarly, there’s real spite animating the depiction of Noem as a dog-murdering zealot whose glamorous face needs to be repeatedly lacquered and reaffixed to her head as she commands an army of Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs.Not all of the season’s satire has involved making real-life figures regulars on the show. Because South Park’s ensemble has rarely felt as vast or believably developed as Springfield of The Simpsons (or even Arlen on King of the Hill), it’s also flexible enough to turn Randy, Stan’s desperately trend-following dad, into a ketamine-microdosing, tech-bro moron addicted to the soothing, empty reassurances of ChatGPT – the focus of the most recent episode, to the point where most of the core child cast doesn’t appear. Surprisingly, this season has deployed forever favorite Cartman more sparingly so far, again getting self-referential in the season’s second episode, where the id-driven and arguably evil little kid is incensed to find out that podcasters have stolen his “shtick” – his pervasive hatefulness, repackaged as a challenge to debate where the aggressor is always the self-appointed winner. Ascribing this “master debater” title to Cartman (alongside a fellow kid serving as an obvious Charlie Kirk/Ben Shapiro stand-in) somehow manages to make this ridiculous behavior funny in its petty smallness without glorifying it.A South Park diehard would probably describe this praise as a fair-weather fan only enjoying the show when it goes after the “right” targets. Maybe that’s true, but it’s also a lot easier to take some joy in savaging Vance as a meme-faced version of a Fantasy Island sidekick than, say, accusing George Lucas and Steven Spielberg of cultural rape. It’s probably wishful thinking to wonder if Parker and Stone might actually move the needle of the perception on tech bros, debate-me podcasters and Trump-world ghouls, especially among the dude demo. But it’s also just a blessed change of pace to see say-anything, first-amendment types finding a fresher target than the wokeness bogeyman. While countless standups continue to whine about being silenced, Parker and Stone seem highly aware of their rarified position (and, as Paramount contractors, also aware of what actual political-corporate interference looks like). In a world where Trump’s actual political opponents seem terrified to actually fight him, some well-deserved, point-and-laugh meanness has become a surprising novelty. More

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      ‘Rural America costs a lot of money’: Trump cuts are decimating a radio station at the edge of the world

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      In Sand Point, Alaska, the radio dial is mostly empty. For a commercial broadcaster, running a station in this Aleutian Island fishing town of about 600 people just is not worth the cost of doing business. But KSDP, the local public radio station for Sand Point, is a community anchor, bringing listeners music, emergency alerts, live color commentary of high school sports, state and local news. Without a newspaper specifically serving the town, the station is residents’ resource for all things local.On 1 August, for example, KSDP hosted an interview with local fish biologist Matthew Keyes. Asking the questions was Austin Roof, general manager of the station. Over fuzzy microphones, the two volleyed stats back and forth about the escapement rates of “pinks” and “kings” (colloquialisms for two of the most fished species of salmon). Roof served as a stand-in for the laborers listening at home or aboard their ships, asking about the noticeably low catches early that summer; Keyes told listeners that while June was among the lowest harvests on record, July had been much better. He then announced the fishing schedule for early August: there would be no fishing allowed for 60 hours straight as officials monitored fish populations, after that, anglers could tune to the radio daily for specific opening and closing times. In a region where livelihoods are tied to this turbulent and highly regulated industry, this information gave residents a chance to plan their summer of labor.In just the past few summer months KSDP has brought listeners not only crucial information about local fisheries, but also delivered updates and orders to get to high ground in the wake of two tsunamis. All the while, legislators 4,000 miles away in Washington DC were solidifying a decision that will fundamentally alter the media available to millions of Americans, especially in rural areas: on 17 July, Congress voted to rescind all funding for public broadcasting.Within hours of Roof’s fishery interview, the hammer dropped: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), through which federal funding is disbursed to public radio and television stations, announced it will close down at the end of September.The average public radio station in the US gets less than 13% of its budget from the federal government. For many coastal and big-city stations, it is an even smaller portion. But at smalltown and rural stations, where donor bases are less robust, that number can climb above 50%. KSDP, which operates a far-reaching AM signal, a web stream and four small FM repeater signals placed in villages across a several hundred mile stretch of islands, gets 70% of its operating budget from CPB – among the highest shares of federal support for any station in the country.“The rural communities are definitely gonna be hit the hardest,” Roof says. “How do you prepare for the end of the world? The loss of federal funding is truly that seismic for us.”View image in fullscreenChairs in KSDP’s broadcasting studio and office are stacked high with jackets. Shoes overflow from a cardboard box in the small meeting room, and haphazardly folded garments fill any unused tables or shelf space. Crammed in Sand Point’s city hall, the station doubles as a donation center and hosts clothing swaps a few times a year. If you attend a community barbecue in town, a public back-to-school party, or holiday celebration, there’s a good chance the radio station put it on. Power tools are a permanent fixture in the studio, and there is always a neighbor ready to do the simple fixes for free or cheap. Roof has personally ascended the station’s 200ft AM tower in climbing gear many times to save money on repairs.Until a few years ago, KSDP and the Sand Point area did not have a reporter dedicated to their stretch of the Aleutian Islands: a remote archipelago extending south and west from mainland Alaska, and home to roughly a dozen communities ranging in size from about 20 to a few thousand residents. For years, KSDP relied on coverage from the radio station KUCB in the larger Aleutian town of Unalaska, nearly 400 miles (644km) south-west, as well as statewide and national programs.Now the station finally has its own reporter: Theo Greenly, who splits his time between KSDP and two other radio stations, KUCB and KUHB, each hundreds of miles apart across the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands.Together with his colleagues Sofia Stuart-Rasi and Maggie Nelson at KUCB in the larger 4,400-person town of Unalaska, Greenly is one of just three journalists covering the 1,000-mile archipelago, and the only one assigned to cover Sand Point.View image in fullscreenGreenly’s reporting regularly brings him to isolated communities for weeks at a time, as ferries between towns in his coverage area sometimes run only monthly, and flights are often delayed or cancelled. “There are many, many places to get news from Washington or New York,” says Greenly. “But there are zero alternatives for news from this region.”Greenly has covered dangerous sea algae blooms, Indigenous language revitalization efforts, and a cargo ship carrying lithium batteries that caught on fire in a local port. He was on the ground when the Aleutian town of King Cove’s main employer, the Peter Pan fishing cannery, closed down, leaving many residents without jobs and many anglers unpaid for the hauls they had already delivered.In July, a resident of the 400-person town St Paul, located about 400 miles north-west of Sand Point, informed Greenly that the town was running out of food; the sole grocery store, owned by the local tribal government, had been waiting over a month to receive a large shipment of stock that it had paid for, but was stuck at the Anchorage airport. Ace Air Cargo had not flown to St Paul in all that time, citing weather issues. Not long after Greenly reported the story, the company got its cargo planes in the air, delivering more than 10,000lb of food and two tons of mail to St Paul.It costs money to report these stories but there is not a lot of money to be made in sharing them – especially in the far-flung, sparsely populated Aleutian Islands. Commercial radio stations are exceedingly rare here; there’s simply not enough listeners. Public media, by design, fills the market gap. “Rural America costs a lot of money,” says Roof.View image in fullscreenAlaska is one of the most heavily federally subsidized states in the US in terms of public services such as education, internet connection and media. Nevertheless, Nick Begich, Alaska’s sole congressperson, voted with all but two of his fellow Republicans to take back federal funds that had been allocated for broadcasting.Greenly followed debate on the cuts closely. “I mean, there is nobody covering this stuff,” he says, noting that he and his two colleagues in the Aleutians essentially double as the region’s only newspaper reporters, as the paper serving the archipelago runs print versions of the public radio pieces alongside stories reported out of Anchorage or by national newsrooms. And he says it is not just locals who will suffer if public journalism in Alaska takes a hit, mentioning that his colleagues were key in covering the 2023 story of the possible Chinese surveillance balloons over Alaska.“When Shell was doing exploratory drilling in the Arctic, this was their home port. When Chinese and Russian military ships cross into the Exclusive Economic Zone, we are the closest reporters,” he says. “If you don’t have reporters here, the nation is missing out on vital information.”Roof, the general manager, says KSDP has enough to “keep the lights on for a while”. And while he doesn’t have imminent plans to close, he knows that losing more than two-thirds of the station’s operating budget will fundamentally change what they can do. He says they will have to rely increasingly on volunteers rather than paid staff if they want to survive. And he can’t imagine how he will be able to continue hosting things like big public events. “Those are the kinds of things that really make our community a fun place to live,” Roof says. “And so I just don’t see that coming back.”View image in fullscreenRoof is already planning one major change due to the cuts: he expects to have to shut down KSDP’s far-reaching but costly AM signal by the end of the year. While AM listenership may be declining nationwide, it still plays an essential role here: AM signals reach much farther than FM, penetrate terrain, and carry extraordinarily far – sometimes hundreds of miles – over water, making it easy to be heard on distant islands or on ships. Roof is planning to shutter the AM signal rather than sell it, as he does not expect to have any interested buyers. The tower, he assumes, will be torn down and sold for scrap.For now, Roof plans to keep operating KSDP on a handful of very small, localized FM signals located in four villages across the Aleutians, and online via web stream, since many people in this region have internet connection for the first time thanks to new fiber optic lines and satellite systems such as Starlink. But not everyone lives in the villages with FM coverage, and the web is not always reliable, says Greenly. A ship’s anchor once ripped apart the fiber cable bringing internet to the Aleutian Islands.Ultimately, says Greenly, cuts to public radio will have an impact on residents regardless of how they tune in. “The word ‘radio’ is kind of a misnomer in a way,” he says. He tells me that people always ask him if people can’t just get this information online. “Yes,” he tells them, “because we, the radio station, did the work, investigated it, and put it on the internet.” Without the newsrooms and stations supported by CPB, he says, “they can’t get that information.”Greenly says he doesn’t know what will happen to his position. His role as the shared reporter for KSDP and two other local stations is funded by a grant from CPB. But his livelihood, he says, is the least of his concerns. “I’m more saddened for the nation than for myself. I’m worried about the community. I’m worried about Sand Point,” he says.As for him, the intrepid local reporter braving the elements to cover stories from fishing to fracking? He says: “I mean, I go back to bartending.” More

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      in US Politics

      John Oliver on Ice’s crackdown: ‘Trying to drive up arrests at all costs’

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      John Oliver took a hard look at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on the latest Last Week Tonight, as more and more videos of Ice raids across US cities continue to show a brutal crackdown on undocumented people. “For all the administration’s talk of targeting dangerous criminals, the reality is very different,” Oliver started.The Trump administration has set a goal of deporting one million people a year, “which, it’s worth noting, would be more than double the previous record of 400,000 when Obama was president, which was already very high”, said Oliver. “But notably, they don’t seem to be getting near their target numbers.” As of taping, the administration had deported about 280,000 people, “so getting to a million in just six months seems very unlikely”.“And they have backed themselves into this corner, because ‘promising’ to deport a million criminal migrants is one thing, but once you’re in charge, you then have to find that many of them,” he continued, “which is going to be hard if they don’t exist in the numbers that you’re claiming, which they don’t.“It’s like promising to apprehend 10,000 Fred Dursts a day,” he added. “There just aren’t that many out there, so either you have to admit that your target number was bullshit in the first place or you have to drastically widen your definition of what a Fred Durst is until you’re eventually arresting any gen X-er wearing a hat.“But instead of conceding their numbers were inflated, the administration is trying to drive up arrests at all costs.” The Trump aide Stephen Miller has instructed Ice agents to target Home Depots and 7-Elevens, and the agency has rapidly deputized a record number of local police to function as deportation agents. They have brought in border patrol as well as the national guard; at least a quarter of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s workforce; 80% of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and even members of the US Postal Service.“This mass reallocation of resources means that other crimes are going less policed,” Oliver explained. The FBI, for example, has instructed agents to prioritize immigration enforcement at the expense of white-collar crime and investigations into sexual abuse.“I gotta say: for a guy who pandered so heavily to people convinced pedophiles, sex offenders and traffickers had infiltrated our government, Trump’s sure making the government a lot friendlier to them,” said Oliver. “Ghislaine Maxwell’s in a nicer cell now, Lawrence Taylor’s advising on kids’ physical fitness. Fuck it, at this point, if he’s willing to wear a Maga hat, I really don’t see why Roman Polanski can’t come back.”Nevertheless, “border czar” Tom Homan claimed that 70% of those arrested by Ice were criminals, while the other 30% were national security threats who “don’t have a criminal history because they try to lay low until it’s time for them to do things bad”.“Under his logic, I guess anyone could be a national security threat,” said Oliver. But “Homan’s numbers are also nowhere near Ice’s own data,” which found that only 40% of those arrested had any criminal history, including traffic infractions, and just 7% were convicted of any sort of violent crime. In fact, as of June, people with only civil or immigration violations – no criminal convictions – made up the largest percentage of arrests nationwide. “Maybe the clearest sign that this is more about pushing up numbers than catching violent criminals on the run is that one of the key places where they’re now fishing for arrests is immigration court, where people show up for their hearings,” he added.As numerous videos showed, Ice agents arrested people who showed up to process their situation legally, using a loophole that allows the government to deport people without due process if their immigration case is dismissed. “It is the laziest possible way to juice up your numbers,” said Oliver, “because you’re targeting people who are going through the system ‘in the right way’ and turning them into people you can immediately arrest and deport.”This trap was among “things the administration is doing that sure feel like they’re breaking the law” but “often aren’t”. Oliver took the “dystopian visual” of Ice agents wearing masks, which is actually legal, as no federal law prevents it. “So they can do it, but why are they?” The administration claims that it’s for their own protection, with the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, including videotaping arrests as an act of “violence” against agents.All of this “gets even more worrying” when one remembers that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains a huge surge of funding for immigration enforcement – roughly $170bn over the next few years, some of which is set aside for the hiring of 10,000 new Ice agents. “For what it’s worth, massive rapid hiring sprees never tend to work out well,” Oliver noted. Past efforts to bolster Customs and Border Protection under George Bush ended up with hiring drug cartel members and an actual serial killer. “And it’s not a great sign for who Ice is appealing to that they’re currently posting gross recruitment ads, like this fake minivan ad tagged: ‘Think about how many criminal illegal aliens you could fit in this bad boy!’” he added. “And they seem more than a little desperate already, as they’ve already removed age limits for hiring agents.”And this past week, Ice shared a video of their newest recruit: former Superman actor Dean Cain. “You know, there’s an old saying in Hollywood: ‘If all you can get is Dean Cain, you are fucked,’” Oliver joked.“Now, I’m not saying that Ice isn’t finding people,” he continued. “I’m just saying, when you are reduced to pinning a badge on the 59-year-old star of The Dog Who Saved Christmas, The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation, The Dog Who Saved the Holidays, The Dog Who Saved Halloween, The Dog Who Saved Easter and The Dog Who Saved Summer, maybe you are in trouble. Although, on the plus side, no need for that guy to wear a mask because the chances of anyone recognizing him are fucking zero.”So what can be done? “As powerless as this can feel, as individuals there are still actions you can take,” said Oliver, such as recording any arrest you witness involving Ice agents. Oliver also advised that if you’re approached by Ice agents, whether or not you’re a citizen, “attorneys told us the only two things you should say to them are: ‘Am I free to leave?’ And: ‘I want to speak to a lawyer.’ That’s it. You have the right to remain silent. And I recognize that in some cases you may be unable to help yourself from saying: ‘Didn’t you used to be Superman?’ ‘I thought you died.’ ‘I can’t believe I’m meeting a film-maker.’ But that really is it.”“We are still in a very grim moment,” he added. “The rightwing narrative is that most people are rabid to punish anyone who wants to become new Americans. But that is just not true,” as new polls found 80% support a pathway to legal citizenship for undocumented immigrants. “Nor are their bullshit claims about who’s being targeted and arrested.“And I’m not saying that everything Ice is doing right now is illegal,” he concluded. “What I’m saying is, a whole bunch of it feels like it really should be. And we need to change that at our earliest opportunity.” More

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      Stephen Colbert on JD Vance’s water level raising: ‘Insane spoiled baby emperor move’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at JD Vance over his unusual birthday demand and Donald Trump over his disastrous tariffs.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert called it “a significant day for our economy” with Trump’s controversial tariffs finally kicking in. He said it’s a day to “set your clocks back to more expensive” with import taxes now the highest they’ve been since the Great Depression.Colbert said it’s “never a great sign to be compared to the worst thing ever”.Tariffs on certain countries are lower if negotiations have been successful or “if the president’s mad at you they can be much higher”.This week saw Apple announce $100bn worth of additional investment in the US, but there is a smaller pool of American workers with the skills necessary to make an iPhone. “I believe America’s children can do anything!” Colbert joked.The company’s CEO, Tim Cook, was filmed this week in the Oval Office giving Trump a gift which was partly made of 24-carat gold. Colbert called it “lavish corporate bottom-smooching”.In the same press opportunity, Trump again slammed Colbert for having “no talent” but did concede that he has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon, whom he said also had no talent. “We’re all equally untalented,” Colbert said, before adding: “Thank you for watching, sir.”Colbert said that while we are “plunging headfirst into techno-feudalism”, the Secret Service is busy raising the water level of an Ohio river for Vance’s family boat trip to celebrate his birthday. He called it an “insane spoiled baby emperor move”.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers said that Trump “clearly has no interest in doing the job of president” and doesn’t “know or care what his own administration is doing on a daily basis”.He is too busy renovating the White House with plans revealed this week for a new $200m ballroom decked out in gold. Trump has said it’s important as there hasn’t been a president like him who has been good at ballrooms before.Meyers commented that it’s “never been a problem that our presidents weren’t good at ballrooms”.To show how little Trump knows about the day-to-day, he played a clip just after the US illegally bombed Iran in which he was told by a reporter that the intelligence community said it had no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, which the president called false.This week when he was asked about Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to cancel $500m in contracts for vaccine development, he also appeared confused. “For a guy who watches cable news all day, you sure seem caught off-guard by the news,” Meyers said.There are also plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, a decision bragged about on Fox News with claims that “Trump doesn’t play by the rules”. Meyers admitted that this is true as at Nasa, rule No 1 is “don’t blow up the moon”.Ignoring the inflation that’s ballooning thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, the administration is instead having to deal with the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Trump “flew into a rage again” after being asked about it this week.It’s still proving to be “explosive for Trump and his Maga base” and so this week a dinner was planned on Epstein strategy involving high-ranking loyalists. Nothing like a “secretive cabal” of powerful people to settle the conspiracy theorists, Meyers noted.It was reportedly planned by Vance, whom Trump threw under the bus when he was asked about it this week. “No matter how much you try to appease Trump or suck up to him, he’s eventually going to betray you,” he said. More

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      Seth Meyers on the Epstein conspiracy: ‘This is a crisis of Trump’s making’

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      Late-night hosts discussed the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the “spite” behind Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the theories circulating over the death of Epstein, spurred on by the alleged missing minute from his jail cell video on the night of his death.He said that Trump is not in the right place to be handling it, as he’s “old” and “tired” and just came back from a golfing vacation in Scotland.While there, he opened a private new golf course, which was on the official White House live stream. “They’re not even pretending any more, there’s no separation,” Meyers said.Trump is “tired from all his golfing and self-enrichment” and was recently seen trying not to fall asleep during a press briefing with Mehmet Oz. “Imagine if Joe Biden did this,” he said.Meyers added that “he can’t hear or understand reporters’ questions any more” before playing footage of him getting confused over a recent question about Russia.Trump has been asked why he cut ties with Epstein and recently said he didn’t want to waste people’s time by going through the details. “Please, my man, waste our time!” Meyers said.He then “dug the hole even deeper” and “made it so much worse” by rambling on about Epstein stealing workers from his spa, which he said was one of the best spas in the world. “Stop talking about the spa – is it your safe word?” Meyers asked.But it’s “not just Trump who keeps digging a hole for himself”, there’s also Dan Bongino, an Epstein-obsessed podcaster who is now the deputy director of the FBI.Despite him claiming that the full, unedited tape would be released, experts have said that while it might be “unclear how much time is missing”, this isn’t the full tape after all.“This whole thing is a crisis of Trump’s making,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert reminded viewers that it was the last day of July, which means that the “basket of deplorable tariffs are gonna kick in” the day after.Trump had originally claimed he had made 200 deals ready for 1 August but “on the other hand, no he didn’t”, with just eight in place before the deadline.Colbert said that “his demands are insane” and many of the countries are included “just for spite”.This week also saw him revive the presidential fitness test for American schoolchildren so they could be “as fit as President Trump”. It had originally been retired in 2012 for a switch to a focus on individual health rather than athletic feats.Trump signed the executive order flanked by athletes, including former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who is a registered sex offender. Colbert called it “a brilliant way to distance yourself from the whole Epstein scandal”.This week also saw lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for clients such as OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Trump, make further complaints about how he is shunned while in Martha’s Vineyard.He had previously complained that his politics had made him a social pariah, but now he is suing a vendor who refused to serve him pierogi. He was later seen speaking to a police officer about the incident.“They have bigger crimes to investigate, like someone’s houseguest bringing a domestic chardonnay,” Colbert quipped. More

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      Losing Stephen Colbert and the Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason | Adrian Horton

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      Last Thursday, when Stephen Colbert announced on air that CBS had decided to cancel The Late Show, its flagship late-night comedy program, after 33 years in May of next year, I was shocked.For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.Reporting in the days since the announcement have lent some credence to CBS’s claim that this was “purely a financial decision”. Though The Late Show has led the field of late-night comedy in ratings for years, it only averages about 2.47 million viewers a night. Its ad revenue plummeted after the pandemic; Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the show loses $40m for CBS every year. Of the network late-night shows – NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – Colbert’s Late Show has the smallest footprint on social media, where Fallon’s celebrity gags still reign supreme. The format of late-night television – a host delivering a topical monologue, house band, celebrity guest interviews – is a living relic of a different time, when a youth-skewing audience would reliably pop on linear television at 11.30pm. The field has been contracting for years, with programs hosted by Samantha Bee, James Corden and Taylor Tomlinson ending without replacement. Ad revenue for the genre as a whole is down 50% from just seven years ago, in the middle of Trump 1.0. It’s long been assumed that the hosts currently in these once-coveted chairs would be the last, their programs expiring when they decided to step down.What’s shocking is that Colbert, who was reportedly set to renegotiate his one-year contract at the end of this season, was not given that time, which just so happens to coincide with a critical window for the intended merger of CBS parent company Paramount with Skydance Media. Three days before the announcement, Colbert called Paramount’s settlement with Trump a “big fat bribe” to incentivize the administration’s approval of this $8bn deal managed by two billionaire families.Regardless of Colbert’s contract timing, it seems the cancellation of The Late Show is a financial decision, just not in the way CBS is framing it. It’s not about the $40m The Late Show is losing per year – a lot of money, to be sure, though a drop in the bucket for the major players here – but the $8bn on the line with this merger. There were presumably other options; Late Night With Seth Meyers dispensed of its house band and musical acts last year to save money. With new billionaire ownership, there could be some business maneuvering, should independent political comedy be a priority. Colbert’s Late Show, a leading critic of Donald Trump on network television, is clearly not; the show may have been a money loser, but in this context, it’s a convenient sacrifice.And though it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at late-night television – I often do – it’s an especially disappointing one, both in the culture at large and in the dwindling 11.35pm time slot. For years, I have argued that the late-night shows have long outstripped their original function as comedy programs. They are satirical, occasionally relevant, sometimes profane, but hardly ever funny, in the traditional sense of making you laugh. Often, they resort to so-called “clapter” – laughter as a polite applause, jokes for agreement rather than laughter – in a deadening anti-Trump feedback loop. With the exception of The Daily Show, a cable program founded for the purpose of political satire, the shows basically serve two functions in the internet era: 1 Generate viral celebrity content as they promote another project, and 2 Comment freely on the news, unbound from the strictures of decorum, tone and supposed “objectivity” that hamstrings so much journalism in the US.The latter was, I’d argue, the most important contribution of late-night television in the Trump era, when the president and his minions exceeded parody, and Colbert was the best at it. Nimble, erudite, self-deprecating but exceptionally well-read, Colbert transformed from extremely successful Fox News satirist to the reverend father of late-night TV: principled, authoritative but hardly ever self-righteous, deeply faithful to the American project, steadfastly believing in the decency of others. (Colbert is a practicing Catholic and die-hard Lord of the Rings fan, facts that sometimes snuck into his monologues.) At times, such old-school values felt insufficient for the moment; the format of late-night comedy as a whole has proven futile, even pathetic, in the face of Donald Trump’s brand of shamelessness, the Maga movement’s ability to turn everything into a joke. But these hosts, and the Daily Show-trained Colbert especially, did something that the rest of news media or the sprawling celebrity and comedian podcast network could not: call bullshit on the administration with the imprimatur of a major television network, and say exactly what they were feeling.That ability proved useful to me, as a viewer, at times when it seemed standard media was incapable of articulating what was happening. During the pandemic, or the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, or on January 6, or when Trump was re-elected, or when Republicans mocked Californians during the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year, late-night television had the freedom to express outrage, and Colbert in particular to express moral injury. The jokes were almost never surprising; they weren’t really even jokes. But it still felt soothing to see someone say them, with corporate backing, at an institution that still carried enough name recognition to, well, merit a “late-night roundup”.Colbert, ultimately, will be fine. He is a skilled comedian whose talents weren’t always well-tapped by the strict format of late-night comedy. Perhaps he will join the legion of comedians with podcasts, speaking directly to fans; perhaps he will release a special. But his absence from late-night television spells doom for the rest of the format, and more importantly for freedom of speech on the big networks. Late-night comedy has been fighting a losing battle for a long time, and The Late Show was never going to out-influence the rising tide of rightwing media, the manosphere or any number of independent shows in a fracturing media landscape. But the fact that he could try, from one of the more famed perches in television, still meant something. More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Epstein controversy: ‘Desperately looking for a scapegoat’

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      Late-night hosts dig into Donald Trump’s growing anxiety over the Jeffrey Epstein files and his beef with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.Stephen ColbertOn Thursday evening, Stephen Colbert announced that the Late Show would end in May 2026, owing to a decision by the CBS parent company, Paramount. Though Paramount said the decision was “purely financial”, the cancellation comes just three days after Colbert openly criticized the company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump for $16m.The settlement coincided with Paramount seeking approval from the Trump administration for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media. Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”.In a separate message to viewers on Thursday, Colbert said he was informed of the decision the night before. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he said as the audience booed.“It’s not just the end of the show, it is the end of the Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced, this is all just going away,” he added. “Let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish someone else was getting it. And it is a job I am looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months.”During his monologue, Colbert focused on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy consuming the White House, and “causing so much trouble for Trump that he recently ordered it to be put in a cell and for the cameras to stop working for three minutes”.“Maga is furious because they think Trump is refusing to release the Epstein files,” he explained. “In response, Trump has been saying that there are no credible files, and if there are, they’re really boring, and also Obama made them up.“That part is true, and you can read them on Obama’s annual summer Epstein client list,” he joked.“As crazy as it is, Trump is going all in on the idea that his followers have fallen for a nefarious Democratic scheme.” As Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday: “Certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats, and they’re following the Democrat playbook.”“That is ridiculous – the Democrats have never had a playbook,” Colbert joked. “It’s improv, baby!“Trump is desperately looking for a scapegoat,” so on Wednesday, he fired the Manhattan prosecutor who handled the Epstein case and “pulled the Uno reverse card”, calling on the FBI to investigate “this Jeffrey Epstein hoax”.“By which he evidently means he wants the FBI to investigate the folks who investigated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Colbert said, “which is weird, but we could get a whole new spinoff of To Catch a Predator.”Seth MeyersTrump “is under a lot of pressure from all this Epstein stuff. Even his most devoted supporters are trashing him and demanding answers,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night before clips of numerous Republicans demanding answers and even calling for an independent special counsel.In an interview with a far-right media network, Trump called the Epstein files a “scam” that’s “all put out by Democrats, some of the naive Republicans fall right into line like they always do”.“Fall in line with what?” an exasperated Meyers asked. “Democrats didn’t say a word. Your own supporters are the ones who spent years demanding the files and obsessing over the Epstein case, which was a very real criminal case involving a very real person, and now you’re the one fanning the flames of the conspiracy by calling it all a hoax. I swear we’re like a day away from Trump claiming Jeffrey Epstein was never even a real person.”Meyers also homed in on the far-right interviewer who validated Trump with “they definitely set the Republicans up.”“Set them up how?!” he implored. “We’ve been asking this question all week: how did they set up the Republicans? They made up fake Epstein files, then kept those fake files secret, then convinced the entire Maga base to spend years demanding the release of those files, then knew they would lose the election to Trump, who would then refuse to release the files they made up? You people all need to take a fucking dementia test.”The Daily Show“We all know President Trump has spent the last two weeks in a wrestling match with the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein,” said Jordan Klepper on the Daily Show. “But he’s been fighting the last six months with a much more alive person: Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. And boy does Trump hate the guy.”Klepper played a series of clips in which Trump called Powell a “stupid person”, an “average, mentally, person. I’d say low at what he does” and a “numbskull … you talk to the guy and it’s like talking to nothing. It’s like talking to a chair.”“Yeah! Whatever happened to all of our exciting, dynamic Federal Reserve chairs?” Klepper joked.“The way Trump talks about him, you’d think they caught him at a Coldplay concert with Trump’s wife,” he added. “But at its heart, this is a beef about economics. Trump wants to lower interest rates to help juice the economy, but Jerome Powell is in charge of setting those interest rates, and he refuses to lower them because he’s worried that will increase inflation. And nothing, nothing makes Trump angrier than someone doing their job well.”In another clip, Trump blasted Joe Biden for nominating Powell. Except … Klepper cut to a clip of Trump nominating Powell in 2017, calling him “strong,” “committed” and “smart”.“Damn, Joe Biden looks fat as shit,” Klepper joked. “But also, I get it. I’m also trying desperately to forget everything that happened during Trump’s first term.” More

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      The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy | Jesse Hassenger

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      The idea that the political career of Donald Trump would be a goldmine for comedy died a long time ago, with the coffin accepting stray nails for the past five years. The latest and possibly last such nail is the cancellation of The Late Show, the CBS late-night talkshow hosted by Stephen Colbert since the fall of 2015, and originated by David Letterman when the network poached him from NBC in 1993. At this point, Trump hasn’t just made topical late-night comedy look outdated, hackneyed and an insufficient response to his reign of terror; he’s also made a chunk of it flat-out go away.There will be time to eulogize Colbert’s particular talkshow style later; the Late Show isn’t leaving the air for another 10 months, when his contract is up. Surely that leaves plenty more time to savage the president – and Colbert has been in this slot since right around the time Trump became a real contender in the presidential race, so why has this only now come to a head? Seemingly because the axing of the Late Show franchise follows the $16m settlement of a frivolous Trump lawsuit against CBS and their newsmagazine show 60 Minutes over the show’s editing of a 2024 interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Colbert made great fun of his bosses’ payout as a cowardly “bribe” designed to appease the Trump administration, who are in the position to approve or deny the sale of Paramount, the corporate owners of CBS, to the company Skydance. In other words, the pre-merger nixing a comedian who regularly goofs on Trump on network TV seems like a convenient bit of timing – maybe even an unspoken bonus to go along with those millions of dollars.The network, of course, has characterized the decision as “purely financial” amid a period when most traditional late-night shows have struggled. As excuses go, it’s not entirely unconvincing. After all, Colbert isn’t being replaced with another host; The Late Show is simply going the same route as its short-lived companion series After Midnight (and The Late Late Show before it). CBS is surrendering the late-night block entirely. This represents a major retreat after the Letterman deal made the network a genuine player for the first time in ages. Presumably it’s back to reruns and old movies going forward.In that sense, this decision does transcend politics. CBS has ripped off a bandage that the big three networks have been applying to similar wounds for years. Late-night programming simply doesn’t mean as much as it used to, with smaller network lead-ins from primetime lineups and more audience choices for comedy, talk, music or even the dopey celeb games that Jimmy Fallon throws together. Saturday Night Live has retained some cultural cachet, thanks to a combination of lower commitment (20 episodes a year, on a night where many people don’t have work the next day, versus eight times as many, all airing on weeknights), legacy branding (it’s still known as a star showcase and political comedy go-to, no matter how wan those cold-open sketches get), and sketch comedy that travels well online. These days, it’s routinely one of the highest-rated network shows of the week when it airs a new episode, offering an encouraging sign that old time-slot rules about viewership no longer apply. It’s also extremely expensive to produce and difficult to replicate, which nonetheless looks more viable than the tired talkshow format.View image in fullscreenBroadly, this could be a good thing for comic minds including Colbert or Conan O’Brien. Some comedians seem unable to resist the siren call of late-night talkshows, chasing the Tonight Show dream even when that actual job remained out of reach. O’Brien is a singularly brilliant comedy writer and performer; as great as his late-night shows could be, in retrospect should he have spent three decades primarily in that waning medium? Colbert, meanwhile, did his strongest political satire playing a parody of a conservative commentator on The Daily Show and its later spinoff The Colbert Report. His warmth and sometimes-sharp humor made him a good “real” talkshow host – and by most standards, a successful one. In recent matchups, his Late Show has been the most-watched such program across the major networks. That he can face cancellation anyway should (alongside O’Brien losing his Tonight Show gig years ago) signal to newcomers that the rarified air of the national late-night talkshow host is also getting pretty thin, maybe unbreathable.Yet Trump has sucked up some of that oxygen, too. Even with the “challenges” cited by CBS, it’s difficult to believe that vanquishing a longtime issuer of Trump mockery wasn’t at least considered a side benefit of canceling The Late Show. Even if the decision was, as claimed, a financial one, it accompanies another financial decision: that Paramount could afford to pay Trump $16m rather than proceed with litigation that many seemed to think they could win. That’s precisely the kind of expense that could diminish how, say, your late-night talkshow attracts more eyeballs than The Tonight Show.Beyond Trump personally smudging up the balance sheets, he’s helped to hasten the demise of late-night comedy simply by being himself, seeming to provide the perfect target: a venal, dimwitted perma-celebrity with an army of devoted sycophants. But after two non-consecutive administrations have flooded the zone with grotesqueries, performing a lightly zinging monologue or sketches as a warmup act for good-natured interviews seems unlikely to entice either those craving anti-Trump catharsis, or those desperate to believe in his strongman powers.That Colbert took a somewhat less cutesy approach than his competitor Fallon seemed to be all that was necessary to mark him as a troublemaker. The thing is, Trump might have ultimately consumed him either way. By providing a ready-made caricature of himself, intentionally or not, the president has beaten the system again. It may not be worth mourning the hacky, presidential-themed jokes we might miss in a future with fewer talkshows than ever. But it does feel like the enforcement of one of Trump’s more minor cruelties: the ability to see himself as the only real star in the world. More