The Inconvenient Faith of Stephen Colbert

The core of why Trump World hates him.

(Stephen Colbert & Evelyn McGee-Colbert at a premiere in 2024. Image credit: David Livingston // Getty Images)

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You and your mother and your cousin have all probably heard by now that CBS has announced they’re cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert at the conclusion of the 2025-2026 season.

The Late Show has been on-air since 1993, first with David Letterman as host and now with Mr. Colbert. It’s long been an institution at the center of American pop culture.

Under the helm of Mr. Colbert, it’s been the #1 late-night talk show on broadcast television for nine consecutive seasons. It won a Peabody Award in 2020—which is the third overall for a Colbert-hosted program—along with receiving a small mountain of Emmy nominations over that time period.

And while it’s true that late-night broadcast television shows are eventually going the way of the dinosaur as they compete with the labyrinth of entertainment streaming options, Mr. Colbert and his team have managed to still keep the storied franchise relevant and popular, averaging nearly 2.5 million viewers in the 11:35pm time slot, to say nothing of clips from the show consistently populating social media.

So, despite the obvious challenges of the saturated entertainment landscape, it still came as a shock when CBS inexplicably decided to pull the plug. It would be like the New York Yankees trading away Aaron Judge because he’s only managing to belt a paltry 40 homers a season. (For you non-sportsball folks, that’s a lot of homers.)

But in context, it’s not that shocking, yet the explanation will definitely piss you off.

Paramount Global, which owns CBS, has been in a long process to merge with Skydance. The deal has been awaiting regulatory approval since last year. Skydance is owned by David Ellison, and his father, Larry Ellison, is a friend of Trump. The younger Ellison sat with Trump ringside at UFC events earlier this year.

Trump previously filed a lawsuit against Paramount, alleging that news program 60 Minutes, which airs on CBS, had inappropriately altered an interview they did with Vice President Harris during the election. There is zero credible evidence to back up this claim. It’s absurd on its face.

But because Paramount wants this merger, they threw 60 Minutes under the bus and agreed to settle the lawsuit brought by Trump, paying him $16 million.

This past Monday on his show, Mr. Colbert slammed Paramount and CBS for the settlement, calling it a “big, fat bribe” and further stating: “As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I’m offended, and I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company.”

He’s correct and he’s right to say it, but just days later, in what is clearly an act of political retribution—and possibly part of the actual bribe given Mr. Colbert’s past criticism of Trump—CBS is cowardly eliminating the highest-rated late-night talk show on broadcast television.

That’s the political piece of all this, which, alone, is pretty disgusting, but there’s another aspect to why most Trump supporters generally don’t like Mr. Colbert, who is one of the most widely beloved people in all of entertainment.

Part of the reason so many of these fools hate Stephen Colbert is that he lives his life as the faithful and humble Christian they constantly claim themselves to be but are too selfish and fearful to actually be.

Mr. Colbert has been open about his faith as a Catholic and the importance he places in Christ’s teachings, but he’s nowhere near obnoxious about it. If anything, he has a thoughtful and empathetic and fascinating outlook on the role of faith in his life, and he can’t stand Christian hypocrisy.

His interview with Anderson Cooper on grief and faith regularly makes the rounds on social media, as does his conversation with pop star Dua Lipa when she brilliantly asked him about the relationship between his faith and his comedy — and his response to her is one of the most inspiring commentaries on faith I’ve ever heard.

(By the way, many thanks to my friend Rachel for reminding me of the latter.)

Back in 2010, when Mr. Colbert was still hosting The Colbert Report in his satirical conservative persona, he broke character during a segment with this summation that you may have seen in any number of spaces online since:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

Goodness gracious, doesn’t that get straight to the heart of the matter?

It’s statements like these from Mr. Colbert that have rankled many rightwing fundamentalists over the years because they can’t simply claim he’s being inaccurate or even particularly judgy. His calm truth and accountability of the Christian faith are unassailable, and that’s what has made him such an uncomfortable threat.

I believe the vast majority of folks who support Donald Trump and claim to follow the teachings of Christ are intentionally deluding themselves. There is nothing about Trump’s worldview that aligns with Christ.

In so many ways, Trump is the apotheosis of the white evangelical movement: a massive grifting culture that pays a lot of lip service to loving Christ but seems to ignore His teachings at every turn and takes every opportunity to make a quick buck with empty pandering and a whole lot of enabling toxicity.

For these folks, Christianity is whatever you need it to be in any given moment for whatever result you most desire. It’s somehow a book club that shuns the one book it assigns, a social club that insists on strict etiquette but neglects that etiquette as convenient, and most of all: a universal shield against true accountability.

Embezzling church funds? Building massive mansions and buying private jets and luxury cars? Engaging in infidelity while shaming others for not being in a ‘traditional marriage’? Sexually assaulting vulnerable people and grooming children?

All of it can be wiped away clean with a simple mea culpa and then it’s right back to the wrongdoing without missing a beat.

I have far more respect for any conservative Baptist preacher of a small church who may find my existence sinful but at least acts with consistency in how they carry out God’s Word than I do any evangelical preacher who spends their time hawking book sales that encourage hatred and quite literally hiding cash in the walls of their megachurches.

It’s therefore not particularly shocking that Trump is beloved by the evangelical movement, and it’s certainly not surprising that his most ardent religious supporters feel so uncomfortable watching Mr. Colbert talk about what Christ actually said.

As a Christian, my faith is buoyed by the example Mr. Colbert sets. He always seems to be led by grace and understanding and recognizing that we all fall short and we all have a responsibility to help each other.

It was on display last night when he announced to the world that his show was being cancelled and then proceeded to flawlessly deliver his opening monologue before interviewing Sen. Adam Schiff — all smiles and all gratitude and not a hint of resentment over the injustice of what just happened to him and the 200 people who work on his show.

I’ll never come remotely close to meeting the enduring example of Christ, but I really hope, in my lifetime, I can achieve something on par with what Mr. Colbert embodies.

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