Save Mr. Stephen!

Published on July 18, 2025

tl;dr: Sport a mustache for a month. Let’s save Colbert.

After more than 30 years as a late-night institution, The Late Show is being cancelled. Sure, the landscape of television is changing as viewers flock to streaming. But to cancel the most popular late-night show on television, especially against the backdrop of an administration that has been actively working to silence its critics? It seems a bit… cowardly, don’t you think?

To suggest the cancellation is happening in a vacuum is to ignore the climate it’s occurring in. Let’s take a quick look at the administration’s recent track record with the press:

Lawsuits Against Major Media Companies: Just before the 2024 election, Trump filed a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS and Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview. Legal experts called it meritless, but Paramount settled anyway—a move many saw as corporate capitulation to secure approval for a merger. Similar lawsuits have targeted The New York Times, CNN, and others for unfavorable reporting.
Controlling Press Credentials: The White House has banned specific journalists and outlets from events, including the Associated Press for refusing to adopt the administration’s preferred term, “Gulf of America.” This selective access is a hallmark of authoritarian governments. I wrote briefly about this here.
Targeting Public Broadcasters: The administration has aggressively tried to defund or dismantle organizations like PBS, NPR, and the Voice of America (VOA), labeling them “radical, woke propaganda.” A federal court had to step in to block an executive order aimed at dismantling VOA’s parent organization.
Federal Investigations and Regulatory Threats: The FCC has launched investigations into networks like Disney and NBC, ostensibly over their diversity and inclusion practices. These moves are widely seen as attempts to intimidate networks and exert control over their editorial direction.
Escalating Verbal Attacks: President Trump continues to call journalists “the enemy of the people,” fueling harassment campaigns against reporters. These attacks have successfully eroded public trust in the news and cultivated a hostile environment for journalists just trying to do their jobs.

Okay, that’s a lot. And frankly, thinking too hard about the systematic dismantling of the free press is terrifying. So let’s focus on a tangible, slightly absurd goal: Let’s save Stephen!

My proposition is simple. Three days ago, Stephen returned from a trip to Turkey sporting a fantastic mustache. He was a changed man: Mr. Stephen. Was it the mustache that was too much for CBS? Too debonair? Was his political wit finally too sharp for the C-suite?

Perhaps.

So, what if we all showed our solidarity? Let’s all wear mustaches—or the equivalent for the mustache-less—for one month. Our demands are straightforward:

Reinstate The Late Show at least through the end of the current presidential term (January 20, 2029).
Launch an investigation, as Senator Warren has suggested, into the Skydance merger and its potential connection to the show’s cancellation.
And for fun: Release all of Trump’s tax returns.
And for the most fun: Release the unredacted Epstein files.