CNN anchor Jake Tapper slammed CBS parent Paramount for canceling late-night host Stephen Colbert’s show, accusing the company of pulling the plug as a gesture of appeasement to President Donald J. Trump.
On Friday’s edition of “The Lead,” the constantly whining activist told viewers that Paramount was in the “bend-the-knee phase” to Trump after it had already shelled out $16 million to settle a lawsuit over an allegedly doctored “60 Minutes” interview with then-Democrat nominee Kamala Harris in the weeks before last year’s election.
In his rant, Tapper inveighed against corporate management and invoked the First Amendment, which is always a convenient shield to hide behind but was never intended to apply to fake news and propaganda of the type that he and Colbert – and many others – traffic in.
(Video: CNN)
“What are we to make of the timing of his announcement?” Tapper asked.
“Obviously, President Trump has made no secret of his hatred of being mocked, specifically, the jokes that people like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel make at his expense,” he said. “In this era where corporations don’t just ignore a president complaining, don’t just dismiss any thin-skinned leader because we live in a country with a First Amendment right to mock the president, that would be one thing.”
“But no, Paramount is in a bend-the-knee phase,” Tapper continued.
“Paramount, which owns CBS. Paramount is attempting to please President Trump as Paramount’s Shari Redstone waits for the Trump administration’s blessing for a lucrative merger with a company called Skydance. A merger previously hung up by a substantively very week lawsuit from Trump against CBS, per legal experts, alleging there was something untoward about a rather rote edit that ’60 Minutes’ did of a Kamala Harris interview last fall,” he said, seeming to suggest as Colbert did, that the settlement was a “big fat bribe.”
Bemoaning a September 2024 social media post in which Trump described Colbert as a “complete and total loser” and calling for CBS to “terminate his contract,” Tapper insinuated that the decision to ax Colbert, whose show was reportedly losing $40 million, was a conspiracy to cancel him for his criticism of Trump, and that PBS which interviewed the unfunny comic, was also losing its funding.
“Interesting,” he said, then whining about Trump’s celebratory post to Truth Social after the news of Colbert’s ouster broke.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” the president wrote.
Tapper then announced that he was told by an unnamed former CBS exec that, “The timing seems so obvious and keeping with Paramount’s quid pro quo theme. If it were just financial, why announce this now?”
“Now, we may never know if CBS ending the Colbert show was part of some secret deal cut between Paramount and Trump, or if it was just a freebie Paramount threw in, or if it was entirely unrelated and actually because of financial reasons,” he continued. “But Paramount is happy to let Trump think it is in the name of pleasing him.”
“The fact that so much of corporate America is dedicated to fearing these presidential whims that could result in actual retribution, could should concern all of us, because trends like this don‘t stop with one president, they start with them,” Tapper said. “And a First Amendment protecting the free speech rights of comedians and journalists when they joke or cover powerful people, an amendment that our corporate masters will not fight for, that‘s ultimately just words on parchment.”
Mighty sanctimonious words from a man who spent years running interference for the obviously senile Joe Biden and then cashing in on a book about a “cover up” that he himself was an active participant in.
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Chris Donaldson is an ordinary American who is concerned about rampant corruption as well as the ongoing attacks on our way of life by those who have contempt for our hard-earned freedoms. A Navy veteran, he has been a frequent contributor to conservative websites and resides in Florida.
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