Senator Elizabeth Warren and Hacks co-creator Paul W. Downs have weighed in on the debate over the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The most recent season of Hacks followed host Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) as she achieved her long-held dream of hosting a late night talk show and then lost the job after network interference.
In a video posted to Warren’s YouTube channel, the Massachusetts senator tells Downs: “I’ve now finished season four, so I have since figured out that you all are in the prediction business and very, very good at it.”
She then asks: “What are we going to do about this business of censorship, not just of the hard news…but people who tell jokes?”
Downs responds: “I think that’s one of the most tragic things about the cancellation of the Stephen Colbert show is that he was one of the hosts that was actually speaking truth to power, and talking about some of the absurdity that’s happening in Washington, and making it accessible for people from both sides to understand what’s happening.”
He continues: “It’s just really shocking to me that an American institution like this, which built the wealth of CBS, could be canceled.”
Warren herself said that while she understands late night shows need to be profitable, “in the Stephen Colbert case, this is the President of the United States, at least it appears, holding back favors and making threats that then cause these giant corporations to censor their own people, and once we’ve headed down that path, we no longer have an independent media.”
Downs agreed, adding: “It’s really scary, and you know, in our show, that’s exactly why Deborah stepped down, because she believed in a business that was better than being censored, and she wouldn’t roll over for this huge tech company in her corporate overlord.
“So it is really scary when those outlets are taken away. It’s really terrifying. It feels like the most brazen example of what’s going on in the country, because there’s no way to really spin it.”
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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is set to end in May 2026, a move that network CBS claims was motivated by a “financial decision.”
However, there has since been speculation that the cancellation was announced to appease Donald Trump, as Paramount, which owns CBS, relied on the presidentially controlled Federal Communications Commission to approve its $8 billion sale to Skydance.
Colbert has long been a vocal critic of Trump. His most recent spat with the president began when Colbert claimed that Paramount’s decision to pay a $16 million settlement to Trump over another CBS show, 60 Minutes, amounted to a “big fat bribe.”
