Stephen Colbert’s Exit Shows How Late Night Hosts Have Lost Touch with the Working Class

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]The liberals were acting like someone died. The liberals were like, "Thank you. Thank you for your sacrifice and everything you have done for our country, Stephen Colbert." I'm like, "Really?" Pete Buttigieg, I remember Mayor Pete, you know, who went from fixing potholes in South Bend, Indiana, to being Secretary of Transportation. He did a video practically on the verge of tears. Practically on the verge of tears. No one's going to miss Stephen Colbert. He's no Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson had 55 million people tune in to his final show. Stephen Colbert maybe had a couple of million.

[00:00:36]Maybe a few million, and I bet a lot of those were airports. A lot of those were airports and people just tuning in out of shock value. But you can see him with Michelle Obama and all of these Democrat elites. Barack Obama, we've got the pictures up on the screen. This is what happens. You take someone who might have been funny, might have been interesting, they get a touch of sitting at the cool kids table, of being a part of the Democrat elite, going to those private dinners and private parties where I don't even want to know what goes down.

[00:01:04]You get a touch of that lifestyle.

[00:01:06]You're now no longer in touch with working-class Americans, with the people who were your original viewers to begin with. So you get a taste of fame and the money, you start hanging out with the Obamas, your comedy suffers, and you become a partisan hack. And here's what I have to say.

[00:01:22]We have a picture. This is the Stephen Colbert staff. We'll put it up on the screen. It looks like about 200 people.

[00:01:29]Here's what I said. The entire TV model is outdated. All these people, and the best they could come up with were boring anti-Trump jokes every night. If you need that many people to prop you up, then you're not really worth your salt as a host or a comedian. That's the truth, okay? You're running a 40 40 million-dollar deficit at your show.

[00:01:48]You're making 15 million dollars a year even with the deficit. You've got hundreds of people propping you up. And there no jokes. There's no humor. I have no writers, okay? I wish I did. I have to sit here on this camera and just talk to you guys from the heart. Okay, I got to come up with things off the top of my head. You know what I'm saying? And promote my teas and whatever we promote on this show. Stephen Colbert is making $15 million a year. He's got 200 people propping him up. The buffoonery, the tomfoolery, the malarkey, the utter calamity of it all. So, Stephen Colbert, anyway, we don't really need to talk more about this because he's been sent into retirement. I never thought my career would outlast Stephen Colbert's, but I'm still here, you get it?