They Can Cancel the Show, Not the Audience

Stephen Colbert mattered because he challenged power without cruelty. If corporations now silence or sideline voices that criticize Trump, citizens still possess leverage of their own: boycott and civic resistance.

I stayed up late last night, 21 May 2026, to watch the final episode of Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. I am nowhere close to late-night TV’s ideal audience member. For one thing, it’s on, as its name suggests, late; much too late for me. For another, I do not follow or know much about current “in” people, places, or things that are often the subjects of talk TV. But Stephen Colbert and I have something in common: we graduated from the same university, Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois.

Of course, I graduated a decade or so before he did, and never set foot near any of its theater or other performing arts curriculum. I spent my time there “studying” history, political science, and languages, and went on to a 25 + year career in national security at the CIA. Mr. Colbert went to Northwestern to “study” dramatic acting, and upon graduation was accepted for an internship at Late Night with David Letterman. The rest is history.

Mr. Colbert is a brilliant communicator. He has said his mother brought him up to be Catholic while questioning the Church. His family suffered a tragedy when he was young. Mr. Colbert came through all of it, and in addition to being funny and insightful, he is decent in the extreme. At The Late Show, Mr. Colbert challenged conventional wisdom; he took verbal shots at well-known people and institutions. He ridiculed targets with more “power” and more “reach” than he had; he never aimed down at those people or organizations with less power and resources than he had. He didn’t bully. He didn’t try to intimidate, he didn’t mistreat, and he did not torment.

Enter Donald Trump and his collaborators.

Donald Trump cannot tolerate being the butt of a joke, which is interesting, given how many opportunities he has had to practice the role. At the same time, Donald Trump does everything possible to make himself as much a target of ridicule as any other living person, and his position, as President of the United States, increases the possibility that he will be mocked frequently, as presidents of the United States have been since the position was created.

Trump’s hair, his long tie, his head-forward posture, and his insistence on using a golf car are immediately visible and almost irresistible things to satirize. If you scratch that surface, his “language,” the way he speaks, his cowardice about firing anyone, and his incoherence at press conferences, increase the range and number of things that can be burlesqued. Even the ever-demure President Obama heckled Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association Dinner, calling Trump out on his birther conspiracy theories and his “leadership” style on Celebrity Apprentice. Trump took that ribbing so badly that he decided to run for president and torch everything and anything Obama did while president.

As Mr. Colbert resumed his skewering of Trump after the 2024 election, our uber self-conscious president simmered until an episode during which Mr.Colbert, in his monologue, blasted CBS for paying Trump $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for editing a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris in a way that constituted election interference. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texas. The lawsuit was frivolous. It was weak. There was no way it would ever have been won. The reason CBS gave for Mr. Colbert’s firing was that it was a “financial decision,” which is nonsense at every level. The late-night shows made their names while allowing the hosts (including Mr. Colbert) to make fun of the people who ran the network and the people who ran the country. At the time Mr. Colbert’s firing was announced, CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert was the most highly rated late-night program.

Throughout this country, people are asking themselves what they can do to stop Trump’s march toward dictatorship. We will miss Mr. Colbert’s leadership, voice, and tremendous talent inspiring us each night to join in that effort. We know we should continue to participate in the No Kings marches; we must vote and help others in our community vote. Mr. Colbert’s legacy points to an additional tool in the box: The Boycott. We can and should also boycott the companies and their owners whose actions benefit Trump. Whether it’s media companies, like CBS/Skydance, or entities that push commerce like Amazon, these CEOs and their companies are propping Trump up and thereby encouraging his dictatorial ambitions. When you wonder what you can do at a time like this, you can boycott.

I know how extreme that feels, and is. And I know the time and money that it will cost. And, a boycott of something, maybe not everything, is something you can do. I grew up with an activist mother, and we boycotted all manner of things: products, places, or people that had ties to the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, and the National Socialist Liberation Front. I still boycott some products with political or social ties that I find difficult to square with my own beliefs. And, to this day, there are foods and paper products that I don’t buy because Mom disapproved of their political allies. I know they have been sold to non-offensive entities, entities with no political links or ambitions. But I can’t forgive them for their original links. It’s time we use our buying habits to aim at Trump and company.

Margaret Henoch served in the Clandestine Service of the CIA for 25 years, at Headquarters and in the field, focusing on operations and counterintelligence and retiring as a Senior Intelligence Officer. She is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.