The talkshow host Stephen Colbert has accused the Trump administration of censoring critics after CBS pulled his interview with a Texas Democrat on Monday, apparently at the behest of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Colbert told viewers of the Late Show that network lawyers told him he was also prohibited from talking about their refusal to air his interview with James Talarico, a Texas state representative seeking his party’s nomination to challenge the Republican incumbent, John Cornyn, for a Senate seat in November.
“Because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this,” he said, claiming that CBS attorneys were pre-emptively bowing to “guidance” from the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, to enforce equal air time on a talkshow for all candidates in any political race.
“Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV.”
The interview with Talarico went ahead and was posted instead to Colbert’s YouTube page.
The episode comes amid a renewed crackdown on media freedoms by the Trump administration, which in recent weeks has included an FBI raid on the home of a Washington Post reporter, and the arrest of Don Lemon, an independent journalist and former CNN host, covering a protest against immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
Colbert’s popular show will end in May after CBS canceled it. The network is now under the control of David Ellison, the new owner and a Trump ally whose actions have raised questions about CBS’s independence. Earlier this month the FCC, reportedly at Carr’s direction, opened an investigation into the ABC show The View, which interviewed Talarico on 2 February, for a possible violation of the equal time rule imposed by the Communications Act of 1934.
The FCC has traditionally acknowledged a bona fide exemption for news interviews, but Carr decreed in January that the commission would no longer do so for talkshows, arguing that “broadcast television stations have an obligation to operate in the public interest – not in any narrow partisan, political interest”.
Colbert took exception to that interpretation on Monday, telling his audience: “Sir, you’re chair of the FCC, so FCC you. I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself.”
Talarico, in the interview posted online, suggested the reported intervention by the FCC was prompted by Trump’s plunging popularity ratings, and the alleged subservience of CBS to the Republican president’s administration. The network paid Trump a $16m defamation settlement last July.
“I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas,” he 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,” he said.
“Corporate media executives are selling out the first amendment to curry favor with corrupt politicians.”
Talarico is in a tight race with Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Texas representative, for the Democratic nomination to challenge Cornyn in the 3 November election.
