Name: Stephen Colbert TRASHES CBS, FCC After Talarico Interview PULLED From Broadcast | RISING
Uploaded: 2026-02-18T23:02:29.000Z
Duration: 8 min 15 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Stephen Colbert taking shots at the FCC and his network over the equal time rule.

Adverbs of manner

Take a listen to what the Late show host said after network lawyers allegedly informed him last minute that he couldn't air an interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.

You know who is not one of my guests tonight?

That's Texas State Representative James Talarico.

we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers who called us directly that we could not have him on the broadcast.

The rules forbid any candidate appearance, including by voice or picture.

That's a stock photo we found when we googled not James Tallarico.

He insisted that it was purely a network decision to pull the plug on the interview and gave his thoughts on it.

Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated by partisan purposes.

He hasn't done away with it yet, but my network is unilaterally enforcing it as if he had.

But I want to assure you, ladies and gentlemen, please.

I want to assure you this decision is for purely financial reasons.

Colbert also had a specific message from Take a listen, sir.

You're chairman of the fcc, so fccu, because I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself, sir.

You are Dutch ovening America's airwaves.

Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because.

This comes as the network continues to experience tension under its new leadership.

Several journalists and even high profile on air talent have obviously left the network.

And that list now includes another big name.

60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper says he will not be renewing his contract with cbs, but

he didn't identify the network's new direction as a reason.

He instead said in a statement Monday, quote, being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the great honors of my career.

I got to tell amazing stories and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crews in the business.

For nearly 20 years, I've been able to balance my jobs at CNN and cbs, but

I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible while they still want to spend time with me.

So this is Anderson Cooper no longer being with 60 Minutes at CBS, which most people know him as the host of CNN.

So I initially saw him like, oh, this is big News.

He's just going to do CNN and they're under different management structures for the time being.

Although obviously Warner Brothers is trying.

They're going to try to merge with Paramount, the owners of cbs, so he can go back to his old job if he wants to.

First of all, the rules should be enforced or isn't.

if we're going to have these kinds of rules, they need to be very clear so the networks know who they can follow.

And like this show's a, this talk show, this shows a news show.

Now there's these aggressively sensorial rules for the broadcast channels because of limited bandwidth.

It just aired on YouTube and on social media, which is where most people are watching news anyway.

So it increasingly seems very antiquated to me that there are these very precise news opinion distinctions.

What you can say equal time, very heavy handed, government mandated rules for the platform that is falling and collapsing that fewer and fewer people are going to watch.

So anyway, I don't really, I don't care for this at all.

Well, I think what we're seeing is a pattern of the FCC saying something and companies reacting before there's any new, you know, guidance administered that's actually on the books.

And I think people are nervous about the new dynamic that Brandon Carr has created between people who run networks that need FCC approval to get things done like these big mergers and, and

him kind of saying, well, I'm strong arming without strong arming through the lens of President Trump.

And I feel like that is coming up more often where, well, why would you say that publicly unless you're going to implement it actually?

And Stephen Colbert is like, this is not an actual rule yet.

But I just can't air the interview because my network is scared because they may want to get into a merger soon that's going to benefit them financially.

Because the FCC may say you're subject to the equal time rule, which means you would have to also have on, I guess.

But I'm not Even see, this is why the rule being unclear is bad.

That means he has to have on Jasmine Crockett because that's the competitor in the primary.

Or is it they have to have on Ken Paxton and Cornyn or whoever wins that conflict, or do they wait till that's resolved and then they have to have him on?

This is why I don't understand, like, Talarico is not yet a candidate running against the Republican because they haven't decided it yet.

So the lack of clarity on that aspect of the rules, to me and to cbs, it seems utterly absurd.

And I think that when they bring people on a lot of these shows, the View, Late show, what have you, you're finding the people that are most in the news to have newsworthy conversations.

So Talarico has recently beat out Jasmine Crockett in the polls, even though she saw a huge surge a couple months ago or a couple weeks ago.

And so it's worth talking about what changed?

Is there a chance that a Democrat could win this type of election in Texas?

So we want to really have these dialogues about, oh, what can change?

I mean, I'm guessing the Trump administration doesn't want Talarico to be the candidate.

They want Jasmine Crockett to be the candidate because they think she will be more easily beaten.

So they don't want positive interviews of James Talarico where he'll be unchallenged and he'll look good.

And the FCC probably shouldn't be in that.

I mean, definitely shouldn't be in that conversation at all.

I would abolish the FCC and just auction the airwaves to the highest bidder is what I would do.

We don't need any regulatory control of this whatsoever.

This is also like having regulatory control over who gets to use the phonograph.