Colbert's Yanked Interview Gets 3M Views in 18 Hours

Stephen Colbert's "unaired" interview is doing just fine off-air, The Wrap reports. His chat with Texas state Rep. James Talarico racked up 3 million YouTube views in 18 hours after CBS kept it off The Late Show's Monday broadcast, quickly surpassing Colbert's recent chats with Bad Bunny, Michelle Obama, and Jane Fonda. As of this posting, the interview had nearly 4.5 million views.

Colbert told viewers Monday that network lawyers said he couldn't have Talarico on or explain why, tying it to FCC equal-time rules for political candidates. CBS pushed back Tuesday, claiming it never blocked the segment and instead gave the show options to comply with those rules. Colbert then pushed back against that on his Tuesday show, Axios reports, saying that the network had not informed him in advance that it would issue the statement. "This statement, it's a surprisingly small piece of paper considering how many butts it's trying to cover," he said.

The online-only interview features Talarico, a Democrat now running for the US Senate, warning about "the most dangerous kind of cancel culture … from the top," accusing "corporate media executives" of sacrificing the First Amendment to appease politicians. The dustup comes after the FCC's Brendan Carr upended the long-standing practice of exempting late-night shows from equal-time requirements.