Executives at CBS News made it clear to Late Show host Stephen Colbert: he wasn’t to interview Texas State Representative James Talarico last night, nor was he to discuss how he wasn’t supposed to talk to the Democratic US Senate hopeful. But Colbert, who only has months left of his tenure on the show after being ousted by Paramount Global, didn’t listen.
“You know who’s not one of my guests tonight?” Colbert began on Monday night. Talarico, he continued, “was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.” Colbert said that, “in some uncertain terms,” the network added that “I could not mention me not having him on.”
“Because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this,” he said, to cheers from the audience.
Colbert went on to explain how the directive to not interview Talarico follows January 21 regulatory guidance from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, upending longtime standards for how talk show and late-night hosts can interview politicians. For years, late-night hosts were granted an exception to the FCC’s equal opportunities requirement, which held that broadcast TV and radio must provide equal time for each candidate in a race, regardless of political affiliation.
“Let’s just call this what it is,” Colbrt said on air Monday, “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV.”
As Colbert noted, the equal time rule doesn’t apply to streaming or cable. So, he interviewed Talarico anyway, off-air, and posted it to the show’s YouTube. According to Colbert, he wasn’t even allowed to put a URL or QR code on the screen to point viewers to the video. Still, as of publication, the interview has over 1 million views.
In his interview with Talarico, the pair discussed the unique circumstances of their chat. (Colbert would later say that the Texan is the first guest to exclusively appear on YouTube.)
“Stephen,” Talarico said, “this is the party that ran against cancel culture. And now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”
“Corporate media executives,” he added, “are selling out the First Amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians.”
Talarico is a rising Democratic name, maybe best known for being an outspoken man of faith who advocates for the separation of church and State. He’s hoping to flip one of Texas’ Senate seats blue.
As Colbert noted, this isn’t the first time Talarico has been on the opposing side of Carr’s FCC.
Earlier this month, the FCC launched a probe into ABC’s “The View” for having Talarico on, questioning if the hosts violated equal time rules. A situation that Colbert called “absolutely shocking” on air, before joking, “James Talarico did The View before my show? Et tu, Whoopi?”
The Late Show host asked Talarico about the probe, saying “Do you mean to cause trouble?”
Talarico laughed, stopped, and then answered with a blunt confidence: “I think Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.