On Monday, Feb. 16, Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show aired as usual, but one of the night’s interviews was cut from the broadcast. As Colbert explained, he was told by CBS that he was not allowed to interview Texas State Representative James Talarico, nor was he allowed to mention the elimination of the interview on air. Colbert, whose unfortunate cancellation gave him even more prowess to be politically outspoken, did just the opposite of what CBS asked of him.
State Rep. James Talarico, a current U.S. Senate candidate, is a Democrat from Texas who is one of many hoping to flip Texas blue in the upcoming primaries. According to PBS, Talarico’s interview with Colbert – or lack thereof in the broadcast – raised $2.5Mfor his campaign in the 24 hours after his interview with Colbert went viral. His democratic competition is Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who is currently on her second term in Congress. Crockett has been leading in the U.S. Senate polls, according to CBS News, but the two are now tied in a neck-and-neck race for the Senate seat, each tallying 41% of voters.
In his explanation as to why the interview never aired, Colbert names the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) “Equal Time Rule,” in which “if a broadcast station permits any legally qualified candidate for public office to use its facilities, it shall provide an equal opportunity to all other legally qualified candidates for that office,” as stated in a public notice released by the FCC on Jan. 21. These regulations, however, only apply to what they deem bona fide news sources (i.e. radio and broadcast television) in order to encourage political news coverage and eliminate partisan bias from public broadcasting. Up until the incident with Colbert, late night talk show interviews were exempt from these regulations thanks to an FCC ruling in 2006 which exempted the interview portion of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Instead of cancelling the interview altogether, Colbert divisively decided to record it and post his full conversation with Talarico on YouTube. As of Feb. 23, the video has 8.8Mviews – more than any other video posted to the @ColbertLateShow channel.
Colbert’s viewers started to question whether this was really a matter of “fairness,” or if it was blatant censorship due to political views — a question that Colbert is not unfamiliar with, as his political views are openly left-leaning, and despite claims of budget cuts, many assume part of CBS’s reasoning for putting a deadline on The Late Show was political. Anna M. Gomez, a Democrat who works for the FCC, stated that she viewed this as encouragement towards networks like CBS to “self-censor” rather than direct censorship by the FCC, according to the Washington Post. Self-censorship of media occurs when the production team purposefully avoids topics that could be controversial as a way to not pick partisan sides and remain “neutral,” though in the current state of U.S. politics, many would argue that “neutral” is a side.
Brendan Carr has been a commissioner at the FCC since he was appointed by President Trump in 2017, and currently serves as the chairman of the commission. Carr claims democratic candidate Talarico was “taking advantage” of untraditional news media “for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks,” quoted The Washington Post. The notion of censorship under our current administration is recurring and prevalent when it comes to the president’s opposing party, while Trump ironically ran his 2026 presidential campaign under the notion that, in his own words, “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country.”
A similar warning was given to ABC’s The View after they interviewed James Talarico, and the FCC currently claims they are doing an open investigation of the broadcast channel. This repeat offense involving the same democratic candidate no longer reads as an issue of partisanism by part of the FCC, but as a targeted, personal attack on a candidate of an opposing political party. Ironically, Talarico has been most outspoken, not just on the issues of right against left in politics, but on the very wealthy few who pitt themselves against those at the lower end of the economy. It appears as though Talarico already holds some power within an administration that is mainly Republican and Conservative leaning, but the primary elections in Texas on March 3 will be very telling, and even more so during midterms if candidates still hold hope of flipping the red state, blue.