With Last Show Near, Colbert Gets More Brazen, Ridicules Own Network’s Evening Anchor

CBS’s soon-to-be former late-night host, Stephen Colbert, ridiculed CBS News and the host of its evening news program, Tony Dokoupil, after he was reportedly blocked from traveling to Communist China to cover President Trump’s trip there due to a visa issue. Mr. Colbert’s last episode is set to air on May 21. Since CBS announced it was canceling “The Late Show” due to financial reasons, Mr. Colbert has largely refrained from taking shots at the network. Democrats and liberal commentators have speculated that his show was cancelled to appease the Trump Administration, as CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, was waiting for the federal government to approve its merger with Skydance Media. The outgoing host has publicly stated that he does not dispute the network’s explanation. He has often praised CBS and said he had a good working relationship with executives there. However, on Thursday, Mr. Colbert mocked Mr. Dokoupil for reporting on Mr. Trump’s trip to Communist China from the Republic of China due to a visa issue.“All the news teams are on the ground in China to cover this epic and historic summit,” Mr. Colbert said. “All except one, because our CBS News colleague Tony Dokoupil is being forced to broadcast from Taiwan after failing to get a Chinese visa in time.”He quipped, “Well, that is disappointing, but it does fit in with their slogan. CBS News, when events happen, we’re at most one country away.”That was not the only time during the show he poked fun at Mr. Dokoupil and the editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss.During the cold open, Mr. Colbert aired a mock opening sequence of “Evening News” with a narrator who said, “It’s the CBS Evening News reporting live from the wrong China.”The clip cut to a man with a pumpkin on his head, as a woman began hitting the pumpkin, the narrator said, “Here comes the head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, to help. She’s hitting his head with a tiny mallet.”A media reporter for the Guardian, Jeremy Barr, wrote on X that the clips are evidence that Mr. Colbert’s show is “truly in its ‘no f’s left to give’ era.”Semafor reported earlier this week that Mr. Dokoupil would be broadcasting from Taipei — while NBC News’s Tom Llamas and ABC News’s David Muir broadcast from Beijing — due to an unspecified visa issue. A source at the network tried to downplay the visa issue, noting that the network had two correspondents in China traveling with Mr. Trump. Ms. Weiss and the CEO of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison, have routinely been criticized by liberal commentators for trying to address conservatives’ longstanding complaints of a left-wing, anti-Israel bias at CBS News. Media-focused newsletters, such as Status, have closely followed the changes at CBS News after Mr. Ellison’s takeover and routinely seized on snafus, casting the changes at the network as a failure. However, Puck’s Dylan Byers has suggested that Mr. Ellison, whose father is Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the world’s fifth-richest person, is willing to endure some hiccups as Ms. Weiss — who had experience as a journalist and running the Free Press, but not a television newsroom prior to taking the helm of CBS News — tries to shift the network to the center. CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

With Last Show Near, Colbert Gets More Brazen, Ridicules Own Network’s Evening Anchor

With Last Show Near, Colbert Gets More Brazen, Ridicules Own Network’s Evening Anchor

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