What Stephen Colbert’s cancellation says about Trump’s America

12:41Willy Lowry:Well, first of all, James Tallarico, the Democrat nominee for the U.S. Senate in the coming midterms. young guy, very religious, practices, I think Christian politics is a way to put it. And certainly someone that the Democrats are hoping finally can turn Texas their way. There's a lot of reason to think that he might do it. And you've seen my map about the upcoming Senate races, Willie. It's a very good map. Texas is one that I think Democrats still like to dream about. So anyway, so Colbert was going to have Tallarico on his show. And this issue became all about what's known by the FCC as the equal time rule.

13:26Willy Lowry:And by the way, the CRTC has a kind of equivalent known as the equitable time rule. It's all about being fair when it comes to political guests on the air. And by the way, this applies only to radio and television. Um, the exception to the rule is news programs, uh, or some exceptions. There are a few news programs and interview shows. Um, it's okay to have guests without necessarily equal time. But if the, if James Tallarico were to be, uh, the host of Colbert show for a week, that'd be, that'd be different. But what happened was back to the FCC, uh, Brendan Carr issued guidance saying that maybe this exception for interview shows doesn't apply or ought not apply.

14:14And that message evidently got through to CBS, which said to Colbert, effectively speaking,

14:21Willy Lowry:maybe you should think twice about doing this. CBS later said, you didn't order Colbert to keep Tallarico off the air, but there was a conversation. And in the end, it did not go on the air. Interestingly, Tallarico did go on YouTube because these rules don't apply for streaming because it's a new platform. But again, what's left over, what was inferred was, again, this chill that we're watching you. You better be careful. You better listen to what we say. If we don't like something you're doing, you better behave properly. And that, again, back to the central theme of this conversation, seems to go against everything in this country in regards to the First Amendment and the right to free speech.

15:13Katie Simpson:Okay, look, Drake spent all that time and energy promoting his album Iceman. He made that ice sculpture in downtown Toronto. And then we got not just one album, not two, but three new albums from The Boy. I'm Elamin Abdel-Mahmoud. I host a show called Commotion. And on my show, we did a deep dive into all three Drake albums. We get into whether this moves him past the Kendrick beef and which album is really the one that you can't miss. For this episode and a lot more, you can find and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important to note it's not just CBS, right?

15:48Katie Simpson:Other networks are facing the same issues. Katie, I alluded to or referenced earlier Jimmy Kimmel on ABC. Can we talk a little bit about what happened there?

15:58Paul Hunter:Yeah, we're going to go on another little journey here and we're going to go back to... I'm just going to buckle up. Exactly. So if we're doing July, Colbert happened in July. This is September. It's September 2025. And it is just after Charlie Kirk, the right wing podcaster, political organizer and very staunch Trump ally is assassinated while, you know, doing a speech at a university. And in a montage, in an opening monologue that Jimmy Kimmel did in the days that followed that, he made what he describes as a joke about MAGA, Trump's political movement, trying to score political points with an attack on the suspect who was facing charges in that murder.

16:40Paul Hunter:This is when the FCC, Brennan Carr, steps in. He goes on a podcast and he criticizes Kimmel, saying that his comments are the sickest conduct possible. And then he starts making threats directed at the stations and the network that carry Jimmy Kimmel live. And that is when we start to see immediate reaction. Jimmy Kimmel's show is suspended indefinitely at first. He'd be off the air for nearly a week and then returned. He also was very clear to make the point, saying, is this about silencing dissent? Is this an attack on free speech? Even if he says, listen, my comments may have been interpreted as ill-timed.

17:24Paul Hunter:He also said, you know, a government trying to silence a comedian the president doesn't like is anti-American.

17:34Katie Simpson:I've had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East, who told me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power and worse than being thrown in prison. They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that's something I'm embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That's not legal. That's not American.

18:08Katie Simpson:That is un-American.

18:10Willy Lowry:And it's so dangerous.

18:12Paul Hunter:And so you have what's gone on with Stephen Colbert. You have a media ecosystem where the parent company wants this big, huge merger to be approved, doing things that might appease the president. And then in this case, you have a situation where the president and his supporters are angry. He's long not liked Jimmy Kimmel, but this seemed to be something that really sort of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement could seize on because people were so, so angry about the murder of Charlie Kirk. But one thing I want to add is I went and covered the funeral of Charlie Kirk, and it happened when I believe the funeral was held in and around the time that Jimmy Kimmel was suspended.

18:57Paul Hunter:And so one of the things that I asked people who'd gathered to mourn at Turning Point, which was the organization that Charlie Kirk had run, I sort of wanted to ask them to get a sense of, you know, what do you make of this? So much of what Charlie Kirk was about was about free speech, even if you didn't like it, even if you didn't agree. And a lot of people will be very critical of that description of Charlie Kirk, thinking that I'm being far too generous in terms of how he spoke, because he did say some things that people find a lot deeply, deeply offensive. But when I talk to these people who are there to pay their respects to Charlie Kirk, they said things, well, like this is we experienced this on the flip side of things, cancel culture, when people lost their jobs because they said things that their employer or the mainstream didn't like that they found offensive, taking cancel culture to target people in our media ecosphere on the right wing.

19:50Paul Hunter:And now we're seeing people. This is just, you know, time has seen it happen on the other side now.

19:55Willy Lowry:Except the historic thing in this country, and by the way, it was David Letterman, I think, who said he could not think of a president. They attacked Bill Clinton in these comedy shows and George W. Bush mercilessly and others, right, could not think of another time where this climate emerged. The history in this country has always been you can have your opinion and you can express it. And I will fight for that right to express that even if I vehemently disagree with it. And that's what's changed now with the people that you met, right? Like effectively they're saying, unless I've misunderstood, you can't – other people ought not say those things.

20:32Willy Lowry:I mean I've heard it from the left and the right, right? I've heard it at Trump rallies. You get pushback from people and the thumbs down and the CNN sucks as they look you in the eye and things like that. But I mean I had it from the Occupy Wall Street people as well. I was doing a stand-up down at Freedom Plaza here one night and they were trying to – and it was when there was all the tents and everybody was camping out. And I started to say my stand up and they all started shouting to disrupt me. And I said, what's like, can you give me just a minute here? And they said, well, who are you? Are you Fox or CNN?

21:03Willy Lowry:And I said, well, I'm CBC, Canadian. And they said, oh, OK, that's OK then. And they all went tools down. And I said, what made you think I was Fox or CNN? It's the hair. They said, because you spoke English. And I said, I don't even know what that means. But the point is pushback against free speech in this country has been around for a has been increasing for a while now as the country gets more and more divided. But it does come from both sides, which I find. Absolutely.

21:28Katie Simpson:But it is interesting to see these late night hosts kind of emerge as the great defenders of it, of free speech. Yeah.

21:38Paul Hunter:Back in 2022, Jon Stewart, another late night comedian host who many people quite enjoy, he received the Mark Twain Prize. And I want you guys to listen to something he said during the acceptance speech.

21:51Katie Simpson:Comedy doesn't change the world, but it's a bellwether. We're the banana peel in the coal mine. When a society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first. It's just a reminder to people that democracy is under threat.

22:11Willy Lowry:Authoritarians are the threat to comedy, to art, to music,

22:15Katie Simpson:to thought, to poetry, to progress, to all those things.

22:22Paul Hunter:So, Paul, I want to ask you, if anything, does the Late Show's demise say anything, do you think, about free speech in America right now?

22:30Willy Lowry:Well, I mean, I think that gets to the heart of this whole conversation, doesn't it? I mean, it certainly feels under threat. I don't know if I've said this story before on this podcast, but I remember once back in 2009 after the shooting at Fort Hood, and we went down like 13 dead on a military base. And we drove up and we're trying to get to where the shooting happened and we get to the gate and it's all, you know, yellow taped off and stuff like that. And there's soldiers and stopping anybody from getting in. And I thought, well, that's it. I guess we go back to our hotel and so much for trying.

23:00Willy Lowry:And then the guy got to our car and he said, who are you with? And he said, well, we're journalists with the CBC. And he said, OK, in you go. And we started driving. I said, stop for a second. And I undid my window and I said to the soldier, well, thanks for letting us in. And I wasn't really expecting to be allowed in. And he said, echoing what Jon Stewart said in that clip, he said, we believe that free speech is the basis for democracy. And I thought, holy cow. I was brand new down here at the time. I thought, welcome to America, man. Like here's a soldier at the edge of a military base where there just been this mass shooting.

23:37Willy Lowry:It's all yellow taped off. And he says, in you go because your job is important to democracy. So back to your question, Katie, it just feels, you know, we talk, how many times we talk about gun rights in this country? It's the Second Amendment. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the right to free speech. And that feels under threat. To go back to David Letterman, he was talking about how he couldn't think of another time any president had ever pushed back against late night comedy. See, Letterman also said that the great mystery right now is why more people aren't standing up against this.

24:13Willy Lowry:And that's where this becomes, it's something we've talked about on this podcast before. Where are the demonstrations against this, right? Colbert is finished this week. Something else will be in its place and life will kind of go on. Why aren't people, David Letterman would say, why aren't people standing up? And to me, and I think to a lot of people, that's as, I don't know what the word is, that's as sobering as anything else that's going on right now.

24:42Paul Hunter:And it's colliding at the same time with a media ecosystem that is the traditional media ecosystem that is just completely not, you know, it's not sustainable the way it was. You know, people still want to be informed and entertained. But instead of, you know, sitting in front of the TV for a couple of hours, they're doom scrolling before bed. And it's just people still want those things. They want to know what's going on in their world and they want to, you know, they want to laugh. They want to know. But at the same time, it's just people aren't consuming it anymore. And it's just a reminder that we are in this moment where it's a collision of a crisis on a crisis.

25:19Willy Lowry:I also think people don't tell me how to think. Tell me facts. Tell me. Give me information and I can decide how to think. And I think that's part of where a lot of people draw the line. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me what to think. Just tell me facts. Just tell me truths. And then I can decide.

25:35Katie Simpson:You sound like a former CBS employee by the name of Walter Cronkite. Is that because I've got gray hair? What's going on? No! You know, all about the facts. I mean, that is journalism at its core, right?

25:50Paul Hunter:Okay, I think we shall leave the conversation there for now. But before we go, we have received a number of questions from the audience about how journalists respond or not respond when Donald Trump calls them names. He's called journalists stupid, piggy, horrible person. Ben in Regina, Sue in Vancouver were wondering what we thought about this. And so did Claire Campbell in Pennsylvania. She writes, when the U.S. president or those in his administration disparage, insult and demean journalists, notably but not exclusively female journalists, why is there not a response?

26:26Willy Lowry:My answer? It's a great question. And I'm not surprised a bunch of people have written in with it. Look, I say you do your job. And your job is to ask questions about the issues of the day. If not, then the conversation in that scrum or that gaggle, as they call it down here, becomes about the word piggy or about the word stupid or horrible or whatever. If you're not doing your job and asking about Iran or tariffs or the economy, then I think you're failing journalism. If you want to consider that to be bait, don't take the bait because if you do, you've lost.

26:59Katie Simpson:Yeah, I mean I think that's spot on. It's about not taking the bait. You're there to ask the president tough questions, to ask the administration tough questions, to try and find new information on important issues. And the rhetoric out of the White House, the name calling is quite simply a distraction.

27:22Paul Hunter:The thing is that if you are going to be a journalist, particularly a political journalist, you need to be very comfortable with the fact that people are going to say things that are really terrible about you. And you have to remember, it's never about you. Never. No journalist wants to come to the story under any circumstances. And that is why you're seeing people not sort of fight back because it's a distraction. It takes away from the story. And we are here to get answers for the public so that they can make decisions about their lives. You can't ever make anything about yourself. Get comfortable with the fact that people do this.

28:01Paul Hunter:Donald Trump does this on camera. People do this behind the scenes. You're a political reporter and you do a story that some politician doesn't like. Like I have examples from being in Canada where political staffers, we had done a story that I'm not going to get too specifically into the details, but a political staffer didn't like a story that I had done. And she had been tasked by her boss to call me up and basically give me hell. And so what I did was I put my phone on speakerphone. I was in my kitchen. I was washing my dishes. I put the phone on mute. Let her say her thing. My story was factually sound.

28:36Paul Hunter:She just didn't like it because it made her boss look bad. This happens. It just happens.

28:42Willy Lowry:Great question. Thanks to Claire, Ben and Sue for getting in touch with us and for listening to the podcast.

28:47Katie Simpson:And I just wanted to clarify something quickly from last week's episode. I talked about being in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, the place where, of course, those conspiracy theorists believed was home to a pedophile sex ring. So the place doesn't have a full basement. It's actually a room in the back. You got to go down a very small flight of steps to get to. But anybody who has gone to a three-year-old's birthday feels like you're in some sort of emotional base.

29:17Paul Hunter:OK, if you have something you would like to ask or have feedback or questions about architecture of ping pong places in D.C., you can you can send us an email, send us a note to WashingtonPod, all one word, at CBC.ca. That is WashingtonPod at CBC.ca or leave us a comment on Spotify.

29:37Katie Simpson:And if you like what you're hearing, spread the word. Tell a friend about this podcast and follow us on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. And quickly, you know, we talked about Colpair getting canceled. You know what? What? Didn't get canceled this week. What's that, Willie? I have no idea. The Montreal Canadian season. That's right, folks. We live to fight another day. You can't help yourself.

30:02Paul Hunter:I can't because aren't we so happy?

30:04Katie Simpson:Montreal people, man.

30:05Paul Hunter:So excited. All right, that's enough. Okay, thanks, you two. I'll see you next time.

30:09Katie Simpson:Thanks, Katie. See you, too.

30:20Katie Simpson:For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.