Stephen Colbert spent 20 minutes on
two subjects, himself and Donald Trump, in his first appearance on “The Late Show” since last Thursday’s announcement that the show will end next year.
Colbert took up the opportunity on his first day back to declare that “the gloves are off” in his treatment of Trump and also, possibly, his own company.
He then issued a warning that his gloves will be off for the next 10 months until “The Late Show” shuts down for good next May.
“Folks, I’m gonna go ahead and say it: Cancel culture has gone too far,” Colbert joked in his Monday monologue.
“Over the
weekend, it sunk in that they’re killing off our show. But they made one mistake: They left me alive!” he said -- a decision CBS may come to regret.
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“And now, for the next 10 months, the gloves are off. I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really
think about Donald Trump, starting right now.”
Among other things, Colbert had a pointed response to Trump’s post on TruthSocial reacting to the
cancellation news, in which the president gloated: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.”
“Go f--- yourself,” replied Colbert in his monologue (the f-word was edited and pixelated out).
Colbert then went on to bring up his company’s settlement of Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit by paying him $16 million.
Colbert raised the same issue in a monologue last week in which he characterized the payment made by Paramount, the
company that pays him, as “a big fat bribe.”
On Monday night, he noted that somebody at CBS anonymously leaked more details about the
“financial” challenges presented by “The Late Show” -- namely. annual losses of $40-$50 million a year.
“I could see us losing
$24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million?” he asked sarcastically. “Oh, yeah,” he added.
He did not
mention any other tidbits provided by the anonymous leaker, but one of them was Colbert’s annual salary: $20 million.
Simple arithmetic tells me that
if it’s true that the show is losing upwards of $40 million, then Colbert’s salary is one half of that.
Colbert’s opening monologue on Monday ran for 12 minutes. When he came back from the first commercial break, his next comedy segment from behind his desk ran for nearly eight minutes.
Grand total: 20 minutes.
After grousing about financial issues and cancel culture, he devoted most of the remainder of his monologue excoriating Trump with
an in-depth dissection of all that has been reported so far about Trump’s long “friendship” with the late Jeffrey Epstein.
With his gloves
off for the next 10 months, Colbert intends to hammer Trump even more than he already has for years, if that is humanly possible.
Some might say that where
Trump is concerned, Colbert’s gloves have been off for 10 years. Ten more months of it really amounts to just more of the same.