Is Trump targeting Talarico? Colbert’s lie exposed

When late-night host Stephen Colbert told viewers CBS wouldn’t air his interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico due to FCC pressure from President Trump, the segment’s ratings went through the roof on YouTube.

The problem with this is that while Talarico championed their forbidden interview, it turned out that Trump had nothing to do with the FCC pressure.

“He is getting a lot of good press in this moment. This quote-unquote ‘forbidden’ interview that he had with Stephen Colbert is working really well for him,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.”

“On Monday night, February 16, during a segment of ‘The Late Show,’ Stephen Colbert told his audience that the show’s parent company, CBS, was stopping him from airing this pre-recorded interview that he had done with Talarico, due to pressure from the FCC,” she explains.

Colbert then pointed his audience to YouTube to watch the interview.

“So saying, ‘This is a big forbidden interview. Trump doesn’t want you to see this,’ it’s brilliant marketing. Both in the actual interview and in the promotion afterward, Colbert and Talarico reinforced that narrative, saying that, ‘Hey, Trump, really, really, doesn’t want you to hear what this guy has to say,’” Stuckey says.

“This is the party that ran against cancel culture, and now they’re trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read. And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture — the kind that comes from the top. They went after ‘The View’ because I went on there. They went after Jimmy Kimmel for telling a joke they didn’t like. They went after you for telling the truth about Paramount’s bribe to Donald Trump,” Talarico said in the “forbidden” interview with Colbert.

And in a post on X, Talarico wrote, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.”

“The problem is it’s fiction,” Stuckey comments. “It’s not true. The FCC — what they’re doing — this has nothing to do with Trump. They are enforcing a rule that has existed for a long time — that’s been around for almost a century — that says that you have to give equal airtime to a politician who is running, to their opponent.”

“Colbert and Talarico made it sound like the Trump administration is controlling free speech, but what the FCC is actually doing is just encouraging the networks — requiring that the networks actually give equal opportunity to all candidates,” she explains.

“So in this case, it’s not that the FCC is actually saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get Ken Paxton or another Republican on here.’ They’re saying in this case that he needs to have Jasmine Crockett on and Jasmine Crockett needs to have an equivalent time to also promote her campaign,” she continues.

“So this doesn’t even really have to do with Republican versus Democrat,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.