The morning after Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show, President Trump was not finished. After posting an AI video of himself throwing Colbert into a dumpster on Thursday night, Trump followed up Friday with a post suggesting that other late night hosts of even less talent would soon follow Colbert out the door. He wrote that they should all rest in peace.
Trump did not name anyone specifically in that post. He did not need to. The late night industry understood exactly what was being said and who it was being said about.
Jimmy Kimmel is the most obvious target. Trump and Kimmel have been in open conflict for years, with Kimmel delivering some of the most direct and pointed criticism of the Trump presidency across multiple late night television platforms. That history makes Kimmel’s current situation particularly tense, because the FCC announced just days ago that it is reviewing ABC’s broadcast licenses. The timing of that announcement, coming shortly after Kimmel became a fresh target of presidential criticism, has not been lost on anyone in Hollywood or in media law circles.
Kimmel is currently locked into a contract through May 2027. That one year timeline now feels considerably more complicated than it did a week ago.
Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon have both drawn Trump’s criticism at various points, though neither has positioned themselves as consistently or directly as Kimmel has. The industry is watching all three of them closely right now.
What makes this moment genuinely alarming beyond the usual political theater is the structural reality of broadcast television. Network stations require FCC licenses to operate. Those licenses are subject to government review. The FCC investigation into ABC is currently active. The president publicly celebrating the exit of a critic and then warning that others will follow is not simply rhetoric when regulatory machinery is already in motion.
Colbert spent eleven years treating this political era with the full weight it deserved. He never softened the criticism to protect himself professionally. The fact that his final week was surrounded by this specific kind of pressure is not a coincidence. It is a confirmation of exactly why the work mattered.
The late night landscape looks different this weekend than it did a week ago. And everyone in that industry knows it.
