The end of the Late Show is either peak Trump fascism or just the beginning

The end of the Stephen Colbert Late Show feels bigger than television. CBS says it is financial, Trump celebrates it like a political execution, and America is left staring at the silence where one of its sharpest anti-fascist jesters used to stand.

Curtain falls to hush,
Laughter fades beneath the glare—
Night silenced by power.

Why Stephen Colbert mattered under Trump

For me, Stephen Colbert was the saving grace of America under Trump.

His funny, clever, compassionate take on modern America in the age of orange fascism was art at its best and most worthy.

He reminded us over a cocktail that America could be a better union, that there was a cultured America that loved liberty and freedom for all minus the MAGA malice.

He reminded us that there were other people seeing the horror of Trump.

He broke down politics like an adult in a bar.

A cosmopolitan speakeasy in a time when it isn’t easy to speak.

As a satirist I think he is one of the best we have right now.

His character on The Daily Show was so brilliant that it spawned his own incredibly successful show.

His work on Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law is some of the funniest cartooning I’ve ever seen.

I wondered at his ability to take on The Late Show, but right from the beginning, he was intelligent, funny, thoughtful and angrily bemused.

He is an entertainer, an artist and a public conscience.

CBS will tell us this was financial, but the stench of political cowardice is everywhere. Trump, like all fascists, despises being mocked and no one could mock the King quite like this Jester.

The gutlessness of corporate America to bow to a mad tangerine Emperor and silence dissent will be judged by history.

Right after Stephen gave the performance of his life, Trump posted an AI video of him throwing Stephen into a dumpster and then dancing to the YMCA.

The crass shallowness of Trump’s malice is a true banality of evil moment.

Is this peak Trump fascism, or only the beginning?

I think this may be the event that finally defines Trump.

Either Americans watching are so horrified at a critic being censored by Big Orange Brother that they hand both chambers over to the Democrats for Impeachment season OR they are so frightened they cower and Colbert merely becomes the first that an unhinged Trump sacrifices for his ever thirsty narcissism.

The end of the Late Show is either peak Trump fascism or just the beginning.

Colbert Made America Good Again.

The void of his censorship shouts and echoes.