Stephen Colbert is responding to the theory that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was canceled by CBS for political reasons.

For some background: in July 2025, Trump sued CBS’ parent company, claiming that 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a misleading manner. Paramount settled the lawsuit for a reported $16 million. Just days later, Stephen Colbert ridiculed the payout on his late-night talk show, calling it “a big fat bribe.” Shortly after his comments, CBS announced the cancellation of the show.

This timing sparked widespread speculation that the decision was politically motivated.

Now, Colbert is addressing those who hold that theory.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I mean, that’s not my job. That’s not my reaction to it. My reaction as a professional in show business is to go: That is the network’s decision. I can understand why people would have that reaction because CBS or the parent corporation—I’m not going to say who made that decision, because I don’t know; no one’s ever going to tell us—decided to cut a check for $16 million to the president of the United States over a lawsuit that their own lawyers, Paramount’s own lawyers, said is completely without merit. And it is self-evident that that is damaging to the reputation of the network, the corporation, and the news division. So it is unclear to me why anyone would do that other than to curry favor with a single individual. If people have theories that associate me with that, it’s a reasonable thing to think, because CBS or the corporation clearly did it once. But my side of the street is clean and I have no interest in picking up a broom or adding to refuse on the other side of the street. Not my problem. So people can have their theories,” he told GQ.

He continued, “I have my feelings about not doing the show anymore, but you’d have to show me why that’s a fruitful relationship for me to have with my network for the next nine months for me to engage in that speculation. I have had a great relationship with CBS. It’s one of the reasons why this was so surprising and so shocking that there was no preamble to this. We do budgets and everything like that. We’ve done cuts and stuff like that. So that’s why it was surprising to me, as I said, but I meant what I said [on air] the next night after I found out because I couldn’t sit on it. They’ve been great partners. They really have. They’ve been very supportive. It took us six to nine months to find our legs. Even before people watched the show, we didn’t quite figure out what we wanted to do. It didn’t come fully assembled out of the box the way The Colbert Report did. And they stood by us and they were very supportive and they gave us what we needed and we found it and we delivered for them what we wanted. I want to do a good job.”

He added, “I’m in show business. I want to do a good job for the network, and I’m really proud that we could do that for them. And that only made our relationship better. Why do you want to be number one? To brag? No.”

Here’s what Trump said about Stephen‘s show getting canceled.