During his Monday night appearance on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart delivered a fiery speech, addressing CBS’s unexpected choice to cancel “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Stewart sharply criticized the network, arguing it was bowing to external political pressures.

Last Thursday, CBS revealed that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will conclude in May 2026, describing the cancellation as “strictly a financial decision” and ending a Late Show legacy that has been a staple of network TV for over 30 years.

“Last week, as you may have heard, CBS, which happens to have the same parent company as the network this program currently airs on, unceremoniously canceled ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Stewart said to boos from the audience. “Now, obviously, I am certainly not the most objective to comment on this matter.”

But Stewart wasn’t buying the official explanation.

“I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment,” Stewart told his Daily Show audience.

Stewart recounted his history with Colbert, whom he described as both a colleague and friend. The two worked together on “The Daily Show” from 1999 to 2005, before Colbert launched “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central.

“A show which in my mind remains to this day one of the most astounding accomplishments in satirical television,” Stewart said of Colbert’s character-driven satire, “rendering a fictional character in real time, four nights a week for 10 years, so seamlessly many viewers believed him to be the boorish, high-status idiot he was portraying.”

Stewart candidly reflected on their divergent paths after 2015, when Colbert took on the challenge of succeeding David Letterman while Stewart himself stepped away from television. “Stephen challenged himself… and I quit,” Stewart joked. “Stephen challenged his abilities in the biggest field you could, and I literally went to a farm upstate.”

Reports have suggested that Colbert’s show was losing CBS approximately $40 million annually, but Stewart argued that the timing and circumstances suggested a more troubling motive.

He pointed to CBS’s recent $16 million settlement with President Trump to end a defamation lawsuit, which Stewart characterized as “selling out their flagship news program to pay an extortion fee.” The host suggested this pattern revealed a network prioritizing appeasement over journalistic integrity.

“The fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number one rated network late night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder, was this purely financial, or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger,” Stewart said.

Stewart addressed what he sees as a broader pattern of institutional preemptive surrender to the Trump administration. He warned other corporations, universities, and media companies that attempting to avoid conflict through self-censorship was both morally wrong and strategically foolish.

“If you believe as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on boy king’s radar… you are f—ing wrong,” Stewart declared.

To illustrate his point, he noted that even Trump’s media allies aren’t safe from his litigious impulses: “Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch. The owner of Fox News. The man, other than Biden, may be most responsible for getting Trump elected.”

The monologue concluded with Stewart’s most direct challenge to the forces he believes are undermining American media and institutions. 

“This is not the moment to give in. I’m not giving in. I’m not going anywhere. I think,” he said.

Calling on corporations to “sack up,” he added, “We reject the mindless machine generated slop that offends nobody, and we affirm our shared humanity. We must continue to have humans make things that inspire and provoke other humans.”