Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Tuesday responded to the leftist uproar over CBS canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” pointing out that the negative reactions to the program’s demise are one-sided.

“The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing,” Carr wrote on X. “They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.” 

The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing.

They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) July 22, 2025

Many commenters on the social media platform agreed. 

“They ARE losing a loyal spokesperson. They don’t care about the economics, they care about the messaging,” one account replied.

“Socialists don’t understand economics,” another wrote.

“Their desperation is pathetic and (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is terminal,” a third commenter chimed in.

CBS announced last week that it was canceling “The Late Show” after the upcoming season, which has inspired outsized reactions from the Left. The network described the move as a “purely financial decision.” A recent report stated that the program was losing $40 million annually.

Colbert went off on an expletive-laced tirade during his monologue Monday night, blasting President Donald Trump and CBS. Colbert mentioned how the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, paid Trump a $16 million settlement earlier this month after being accused of election interference. 

“People have been speculating about the timing of this decision from Paramount, and they’re pointing out that last Monday, just two days before my cancellation, I delivered a blistering monologue in which I showed the courage to have a mustache,” said Colbert. “When obviously CBS saw my upper lip and boom, canceled. Coincidence? Oh, I think not. This is worse than fascism. This is stashism.”

“They clarified that the cancellation was purely a financial decision. But how could it purely be a financial decision if ‘The Late Show’ is number one in ratings? A lot of folks are asking that question, mainly my staff’s parents and spouses,” Colbert went on. 

Next, he accused CBS insiders of leaking financial details to justify the cancellation.

“Over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year. $40 million is a big number. I could see us losing $24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16 million? Oh, yeah,” he said, seemingly referencing the amount of the settlement.

Trump has since said that he anticipates an additional $20 million in advertising and public service announcements after new owners take control of Paramount.

Legacy media outlets that pushed the Russia collusion hoax are downplaying bombshell documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which reveal that the Obama administration suppressed intelligence proving that Russian meddling did not impact the 2016 election. 

The documents show that President Barack Obama ordered a new intelligence community assessment into alleged Russian meddling just one day after the suppression of an intel draft report showed Russia had no impact on election results. In response to the documents, media outlets have accused Gabbard of “rewriting” history around the Obama administration’s role in perpetuating the Russia narrative.  

On Tuesday, CNN published an article suggesting that Gabbard was “misleading” the public about the Russia hoax, saying that her “allegations about the Russia investigation don’t add up.” NBC published an article claiming that Gabbard was attempting to “rewrite the history of the 2016 election.” 

The articles claim that Gabbard said there were no Russian efforts to interfere in the election at all. But Gabbard’s memo on the declassified documents actually notes that there “is still supporting evidence indicating the Russian government directed hacking” of the Democratic National Committee. 

What the media outlets dismiss is that the newly-released documents show a consensus in December 2019 from intelligence officials that Russia did not impact the outcome of the election, and that Russia did not have the ability to actually impact the election results.

For example, talking points from the office of then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper on December 7 found that “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

A Presidential Daily Briefing draft for December 8, 2016, contains the same points. 

“We assess Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure,” intelligence officials stated in the unpublished draft.

An intelligence official killed the publication of the draft that day due to “high administration interest,” and the FBI yanked co-authorship to draft a dissent. 

Just one day later, on December 9, Obama asked the intelligence community to come up with a new assessment of Russian meddling. That same day, The Washington Post published an article citing anonymous intelligence officials who said that the CIA concluded that Russia “intervened” to help Trump win the presidency, “rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” 

As Gabbard’s memo notes, “there is no official [intelligence community] assessment that contains that conclusion.”

CNN’s Tuesday article also cited unnamed “congressional sources” who disputed Gabbard’s claim that the discredited Steele Dossier — paid for by the Clinton campaign — informed the January 2017 intelligence assessment commissioned by Obama that claimed a larger role for Russia in the 2016 election. 

However, as documents released by Gabbard show, an intelligence community whistleblower was informed that the Steele Dossier “was a factor” in the Obama 2017 Russia intelligence assessment. Then-CIA Director John Ratcliffe also found that the dossier was included in the assessment, writing in a recent report that this “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”

Both CNN and NBC also said that the intelligence community never claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election. But nearly two-thirds of Democrats polled in 2018 believed that Russian hacking changed voting totals in the election. 

That came after headlines like “Obama orders review of Russian election-related hacking” from CNN and “U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack” from NBC. 

Gabbard has reportedly sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department over the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment in January 2017.

“There’s no question in my mind that this intelligence community assessment that President Obama ordered be published which contained a manufactured intelligence document — it’s worse than even politicization of intelligence,” Gabbard told Fox News last week. “It was manufactured intelligence that sought to achieve President Obama and his team’s objective, which was undermining President Trump’s presidency and subverting the will of the American people.”