On the night of Thursday 21 May, Stephen Colbert walked out onto the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater for the last time. After 33 years, The Late Show is finished. He did not dwell on why his show was being taken off the air, mentioning the situation with CBS and Paramount sparingly. He thanked CBS, told a booing audience they had been lucky, and left. By the next morning, Donald Trump had made it clear that he wanted the removal of the comedian and his TV show. While he had already publicly attacked Colbert, that morning, Trump had posted to Truth Social: “Amazing he lasted so long!” The post came in a flurry of bizarre AI posts from the U.S. President, one of which showed the man in orange grab the late night TV host and throw him into a dumpster.

The comedian declined to make himself the story, essentially offering an unsaid “out” to the authoritarian move by Donald Trump. The head of state could not stop himself from gloating over the success of his silencing campaign. Donald Trump has attacked the media and comedians, in a way that seems all too familiar, as we have seen this before. Not in America, but in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.