Despite how the President and his loyalists in the media may portray Stephen Colbert, the current and final Late Show host is not some communist agitator just because he’s further to the left than Darth Vader.
Back when Colbert still played a satirical, Bill-O’Reilly-like conservative commentator character on The Colbert Report, it was shockingly common to hear actual right-wing viewers praise the performance, as they were apparently under the impression that Colbert really was on their side of the aisle. However, ever since Colbert took over hosting duties on The Late Show following the retirement of David Letterman in 2015, far fewer Republican voters have been mistaking Colbert for one of their own – in fact, if you hear the President or his cronies talk about The Late Show, you’d think it was being run by the transgender great-grandchild of Karl Marx.
Next May will mark the end of The Late Show following the decision by Paramount Global and its new owners at Skydance Media to move away from the late-night format, thus removing one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent critics from the airwaves. Some fans of the show expected Colbert to go scorched-earth on the conservative power structure that continues to encroach on the media in spite of the constitution, but Late Show episodes since its cancelation announcement have been lacking that radical edge – much like the rest of Colbert’s tenure on the series.
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In a new profile for GQ, Colbert reflected on the end of The Late Show and his own place in the entertainment industry, admitting that the general public on both sides may have some misconceptions about his personal beliefs. “People perceive me as this sort of lefty figure,” Colbert opined, “I think I’m more conservative than people think.”
Colbert added that, despite how America’s far-right portrays him to be the living embodiment of radical leftism, it’s only because “I just happen to be talking about a government in extremis.” And, since America’s federal government is run by people who are actively trying to destroy democracy and institute fascism, that makes Colbert look way more “lefty” than he really is.
“What I’m giving you is my reaction video to the day,” Colbert said of his approach to political comedy, “And my reaction video is like The Scream, in a way, but with jokes. So that makes me perceived as more left necessarily than I am because I’m not sure what other reaction would be an honest one.” Colbert stated plainly of our current political landscape, “It’s hard to have a balanced reaction to the idea of troops on streets of a city that actually is not undergoing an invasion.”
As such, Colbert continues to criticize a President and a government that he feels tramples the democratic principals upon which America was founded. Perhaps that criticism is why Paramount made the decision to cut ties with Colbert. However, when you look at the line-up of Democratic leaders who came on The Late Show in the weeks following the cancelation, it’s apparent that the most concerned members of the Democratic Party regarding Colbert’s future are far from political radicals – figures like Senator Elissa Slotkin and former Vice President Kamala Harris are not exactly the vanguard of the party’s progressive wing.
Frankly, Colbert’s proximity to the center and his cozying up to the entrenched leadership of the Democratic Party are part of the reason why The Late Show felt so much less biting than his work on The Colbert Report. When Colbert was exposing Republican hypocrisy through parody, he didn’t have to define his own beliefs as clearly. Once we learned how tame Colbert’s politics really were, his shtick became so milquetoast that only a perpetually triggered egomaniac could ever consider it extreme.
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