Trump DOJ target Don Lemon issued a stark warning about the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show.
Lemon, 60, wrote an impassioned tribute to late-night and Colbert, 62, on his Substack on Thursday, which he published on Colbert’s final day as a late-night host. “Republicans love to call themselves free speech absolutists,” wrote Lemon.
“They say it constantly. They built entire political careers on it. And every time someone says something they don’t like, every time a comedian lands a joke that stings, every time a journalist asks a question they cannot answer, they find a way to make it stop.”
As he applauded Colbert’s role in the ecosystem of American media, Lemon simultaneously lambasted media executives, Republican “snowflakes,” and MAGA mouthpieces.
Republicans “cancel shows,” “pressure networks,” and “arrest journalists,” he wrote. “They are the biggest snowflakes in American public life, wrapping themselves in the language of free speech while working every day to eliminate it for anyone who disagrees with them.”
“They only want free speech if the speech flatters them.”
While Lemon praised “brilliant” Colbert in his ode to late-night, he insisted that the public should save its tears over The Late Show‘s cancellation when he echoed the points in his essay live on The Don Lemon Show. “Don’t cry for Stephen Colbert,” he said. “He will be more successful in this next chapter, professionally, financially, personally, than most people will be in a lifetime. He has talent that no network can cancel or no administration can arrest.”
“Cry for the First Amendment. Cry for every voice that has gone quiet while we debated whether the economics made sense.”
CBS canceled Colbert last July, just days after the host censured his own network’s parent company, Paramount, for forking over a $16 million settlement to Trump’s presidential library over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. CBS said the cancellation of The Late Show was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
Lemon said that he can believe that the “economics of late-night television may no longer support a show at this scale,” and Paramount’s reasoning for ending the show “may be true,” but late-night television plays an important role in American politics.
“They hold up a mirror. Every night. And in that mirror, you see Donald Trump as he actually is. Not the strong man. Not the dealmaker. Not the savior. A small, insecure, thin-skinned, desperately needy man who cannot stand to be laughed at. And his allies cannot stand it either,” he wrote.
“The late-night landscape that ends tonight was not just entertainment,” he continued. “It was a nightly act of democratic resistance. Johnny Carson made us laugh. David Letterman made us think. And then the world changed, and Colbert, Kimmel, and the others did something different and necessary. They told us the truth through comedy because the truth had become so surreal that comedy was the only container large enough to hold it. They were journalists in clown shoes. And they were essential.”
Lemon also touched upon his own high-profile arrest in February, after the former CNN journalist was reporting on an anti-ICE protest from a Minnesota church. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the arrest happened at her direction. Lemon’s attorney blasted the charges as “baseless,” and the journalist has since pleaded not guilty to federal charges.
Lemon tied the implications of his arrest to Colbert’s cancellation. “I was a warning. My arrest was a warning. Colbert’s cancellation is a warning. The question is whether anyone is paying attention to what all of these silences have in common,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Lemon for comment.
The curtains will officially close on Colbert’s Late Show on May 21, after 11 seasons. Its ending and Colbert’s looming absence from late-night have been lamented by colleagues, celebrities, and politicians.
