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'Partisan circus': FCC chair won't say if Trump pushed for Stephen Colbert to be cancelled

David Badash
24 July

Fox News host Bill Hemmer and FCC chairman Brendan Carr on July 24, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via Fox News / X / @atrupar)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr declined to say whether President Donald Trump played a role in the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s CBS show—but hinted that media companies may be taking cues from the White House.

Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Thursday asked Carr directly: “Did President Trump have anything to do with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show?”

Carr offered a roundabout response.

READ MORE: Tuberville: Dems Must ‘Lawyer Up’ for Plot to Make America ‘Communist’

“Well here’s what’s important to keep in mind is a broader dynamic,” he began, before declaring that Trump, during the election, “ran right at these legacy broadcast media outfits and the New York and Hollywood elites that are behind it, and he smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can control what Americans think and what Americans can say.”

Carr alleged that Trump “exposed the business model a lot of these outfits as being nothing more than a partisan circus.”

He did acknowledge that, he believes, there are “a lot of consequences that are flowing” from Trump deciding that he’s not going to “play by the rules of politicians in the past,” or allow the mainstream media to “dictate the narratives in the terms of the debate,” before declaring, “he’s succeeding.”

Carr then pointed to Congress’s defunding of NPR and PBS, before adding, “Colbert is getting canceled.”

READ MORE: GOP Congressman: ‘Round Everybody Up and Deport Them All’

Hemmer responded, “I asked you very direct question. I did not hear a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in your answer. I heard I heard ‘maybe.'”

Carr again did not give a direct answer.

“Yeah, ultimately, these are business decisions for CBS to make—and for these outfits to make.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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