The MRC vs. Colbert: Comedy Cop Wars
The Media Research Center continued to lash out at Stephen Colbert for failing to be a right-winger -- and pretended it didn't get suckered into his narrative about his interview of James Talarico.
Having expressed a fair bit of schadenfreude over the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night TV show, the Media Research Center returned to more typical comedy-cop antics when Colbert returned after an August break. Chief MRC comedy cop Alex Christy huffed in a Sept. 3 post:
If you are a normal person, you might have missed that over the Labor Day weekend, left-wing portions of the internet were running wild with rumors that President Trump had died. Of course, these rumors were false, but on Tuesday, CBS’s Stephen Colbert still had to stop The Late Show audience from booing that fact.
Colbert began what would’ve been his set-up, “When I came back in the office, I was shocked to learn that this weekend, the biggest story was frenzied social media rumors speculating whether Donald Trump had died.”
As the audience cheered, Colbert continued, “For the record, Donald Trump is very much alive. Okay? And—”
Colbert then had to stop to rebuke the audience, which was now booing, “No. We like our presidents alive.”
This is why viewing a comedy show as a cathartic experience to vent anger and frustration is destined to end in failure. Eventually someone was going to take it too far and say the quiet part out loud.
[…]
If Colbert viewed his show as a comedy show first and not a nightly therapy session where liberals come to process their feelings and cope with their problems, he could’ve been spared the embarrassment of having to rebuke his own audience for booing the Trump hadn’t actually died.
The next day, Christy played pedantic fact-checker:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert had an unconvincing rebuttal on Wednesday to President Trump’s recent Truth Social posts that portrayed Chicago as a crime-ridden and dangerous city. Colbert’s three-part response involved telling Trump “[bleep] you,” repeating some false statistics, and saying Chicago can’t be that bad because The Late Show traveled there in the summer of 2024 and came back alive.
Breaking out his Trump voice, Colbert ranted, “Yesterday, Trump also posted, ‘Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the world, by far.’ Worst and most dangerous? Two words: [Bleep] you. You know what? You know what?… Trump slandered on, ‘Chicago is the murder capital of the world!’”
Colbert then sought to do some fact-checking, “Fun fact: No. According to the FBI, 22 major cities have higher rates of murder than Chicago.”
Fun fact: no. Colbert was citing a Newsweek article headlined “Full List of Major Cities With Higher Murder Rates Than Chicago.” However, the list Newsweek provided was “of cities with more than 100,000 residents that have higher crime rates than Chicago, per the FBI report.”
In other words, Trump was talking about murder rates, and Newsweek, despite its headline and article, was talking about crime in general. When it comes to murder rates, Chicago, according to Newsweek itself, is a top 10 city. On a per capita basis, it was ranked 8th last year.
For a Sept. 5 post, Christy whined that Colbert doesn’t hate public broadcasting as much as he and his employer do:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed NPR CEO Katherine Maher to Thursday’s taping of The Late Show for a grieving session on the latter being defunded. According to Maher, the fate of democracy depends on NPR, and only people who seek to divide and pit Americans against each other could possibly support defunding it.
Colbert put the ball on the tee for Maher by repeating the idea that public broadcasting is of vital importance for local news, “And while it’s possible now to, like, use streaming wherever you are and basically get another radio station, one of the things, as I understand it, is that with the decline of local newspapers and local news, these NPR stations are critical sources for people to know about their own community.”
[…]
She concluded by claiming, “When we do that right, you can fundamentally disagree with something someone says, but you can’t deny their empathy or humanity, and that is such a powerful tool. So, if you’re seeking to create some sort of advantage in societies that are fractured and splintered, taking away this tool that allows us to see one another as fellow citizens, fellow Americans, it’s a really powerful advantage.”
This is why Maher lost the defunding battle. She talks about bringing people together, but all NPR’s programming does is drive them apart. Maybe that’s just the nature of politics, but if so, NPR can do that on its own dime.
Christy grumbled in a Sept. 10 post:
On Tuesday, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert became the latest stop on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book tour, but the eponymous host got more than he bargained for when his straw man portrayal of a recent decision involving ICE was so bad, even the dissenting liberal justice had to correct him on it.
[…]
Later, during the interview, Colbert repeated himself, “Let’s talk about the decision yesterday. Yesterday, the Court ruled from that emergency docket that ICE can round up, in this case it was people of Hispanic heritage or who spoke Spanish in the case of Los Angeles and the California ICE arrests or detainments, but really anyone for any reason.”
Sotomayor tried to interrupt, “Well, no. In fairness—”
Colbert wasn’t having it, “I’m not a lawyer, but I’m going to push back here because in this case they’re saying those are the circumstances, but isn’t the upshot of that if they are looking for reasonable suspicion, which is a much lower bar than probable cause, they could make up new rationales for a different group of people who they feel are associated with some crime that has to be prevented.”
For a second time, Sotomayor tried to push back, “Now, let me stop you. In fairness to the majority, and by the way, I didn’t agree with them and—”
[…]
Colbert then shifted from misrepresenting the majority opinion to mocking the idea the change made any difference, “So, people with low-wage jobs have fewer protections.”
Sotomayor did not wish to push the issue, “Well, that’s what they said. Let’s not go any further. Okay. That’s what they said. And they’re working at jobs where illegal aliens typically work. That’s the claim, all right? Now, I explain and read my dissent, please, you should.”
Much of the rest of September was taken up with Charlie Kirk’s death and Jimmy Kimmel’s brief suspension. ConWebWatch has noted that Christy lashed out at both Colbert and Kimmel for highlighting a study that the Trump administration deleted from government websites because it didn’t conform to the correct narratives on ideologically motivated violence, dubiously trying to defend the censorship. Christy also grumbled that Colbert and Kimmel appeared on each other’s shows to complain about the right-wing cancel culture they’ve experienced.
The hostility continues
The MRC spent the remainder of 2025 exhibiting that same hostile, whiny and biased behavior toward him, courtesy of comedy cop Alex Christy:
Colbert Gushes Over Newsom For ‘Being Interesting’ As Duo Fears Rigged Elections
Colbert And Murphy Try To Make Dallas ICE Shooting About Gun Control
Colbert, Strong Blame George H.W. Bush For Impending Climate Doom
Colbert Ties Hegseth’s ‘Warrior Ethos’ Speech To Debate Over Political Rhetoric
Colbert Claims It Is ‘Stupid Fearmongering’ To Say Dems Want Benefits For Illegals
Colbert and Kimmel Hail Gaza Deal, But Mock Idea Of Trump Winning Peace Prize
Colbert and Wagner Gush Over No Kings, Dems’ Government Shutdown
Colbert Suggests It Will Take Years To Rebuild Democracy After Trump
Colbert Claims Trump Wants Kids To Go Hungry To Pressure Democrats
Colbert Celebrates DC Sandwich Thrower’s Acquittal With T-Shirt Cannon
Colbert Continues Fuming At Schumer’s ‘Failure Of Leadership’
New York Public Radio Honors Colbert At ‘You Can’t Defund The Truth’ Fundraiser
Colbert Claims Admiral’s Defense Of Second Boat Strike Was Dumb
Colbert Joke: GOP Health Care Mascot’s a Dog Saying ‘I Want You to Go Out and Kill’
Note that many of these items involve Colbert or a guest failing to adhere to MRC-approved right-wing narratives.
Christy also channeled his rage at Colbert in a Nov. 4 post:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert had an actually funny joke on Monday. There were only two problems. One was that he told it not on The Late Show, but during an interview with GQ’s Zach Baron as the magazine put him on the cover of its “men of the year” issue. A second problem was that it was completely unintentional, as he told Baron that “I think I’m more conservative than people think.”
During a discussion on the political aspects of his show, Colbert claimed, “I share that— those feelings with the audience, and they laugh or they don’t laugh, and that there’s a sense of community there, and you know the demographics of these shows are interesting too. It’s about a third, a third, a third. It’s about a third Republicans, a third Democrats, a third independents. You’d think, you know, old, you know, people perceive me as this sort of lefty figure. I think I’m more conservative than people think. I just happen to be talking about a government in extremis.”
Fact-check: 38 percent of Democrats confess to watching late night “very or somewhat often.” By contrast, 21 percent of Republicans and 22 percent of independents claim likewise.
Colbert got worse from there, “And so what I’m giving you is my reaction video to the day. And, and my reaction video is like, you know, is like the scream in a way, but with, with jokes and so that makes me—perceives me as more left necessarily than I am because I’m not sure of what other reaction would be an honest one. It’s hard to have a balanced reaction to the idea of troops on the street of a city that actually is not undergoing an invasion. Is any other reaction honest other than to?”
It would be one thing if Colbert simply didn’t like Trump or him sending the National Guard to various cities, but every time he talks policy, whether it’s abortion, LGBTQ stuff, the government shutdown, foreign policy, or whatever else you can think of, he is always taking the liberal position. Since NewsBusters started keeping track in September 2022 through June 2025, Colbert has had on 176 liberal guests and only one Republican, and that was Liz Cheney.
Yes, Christy played comedy cop for his pedantic joke counts. He huffily concluded: “Every time Colbert does one of these interviews, he ends up sounding perfectly reasonable. The only problem is that such sentiments are not in line with what actually happens on The Late Show.” If Colbert didn’t say liberal things, what would Christy do with his life?
Pretending Colbert didn’t win narrative
Christy played into Colbert’s hands in a Feb. 17 post:
The Late Show host Stephen Colbert angrily denounced FCC chairman Brendan Carr after CBS told him that he could not interview Texas State Rep. and Senate candidate James Talarico for his Monday show. Colbert accused Carr and President Trump of trying to silence him but ultimately ended up interviewing Talarico anyway and put the video up on YouTube. Beyond the FCC, the main purpose of the Talarico interview was to denounce conservatives as being bad Christians.
Colbert began by lamenting, “You know who is not one of my guests tonight? That’s Texas State Representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here. But we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast. Then, I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
After explaining the equal time rule, Colbert continued, “There’s long been an exemption for this rule, an exception for news interviews and talk show interviews with politicians…On January 21st, a letter was released by FCC Chairman and smug bowling pin, Brendan Carr. In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were ‘motivated by partisan purposes.’ Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC, so FCC you.”
Colbert also huffed, “I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself. Sir, ya smelt it ’cause ya dealt it. You are Dutch-ovening America’s airwaves. Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV. Because all Trump does is watch TV. Okay? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diaper.”
Ironically, the election in this controversy is the Democratic primary, so the person who benefits most from this is not Donald Trump, incumbent John Cornyn, or his challenger, state AG Ken Paxton, but the left’s favorite congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett.
As for the YouTube interview, it was as partisan as any other Colbert interview.
Of course Christy would push that idea — it’s what he gets paid to do as the MRC’s comedy cop.
Later that day, Craig Bannister put out a propaganda piece that conveniently supported the right-wing narrative:
“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” CBS said in a statement Tuesday after the show’s host, Stephen Colbert, claimed he was “told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers” that he could not air his interview with the Democrat candidate.
Instead, CBS said, the lawyers merely provided Colbert’s show with “guidance,” warning of potential FCC consequences of having one candidate on, but not offering equal time to Talarico’s fellow Democrats contesting in a primary to be the party’s Texas Senate candidate.
Rest assured that Bannister would not have written this piece if CBS released a different statement.
The next day, Christy put out Colbert’s side of the story — something Bannister couldn’t be bothered to do — while still being pro-CBS:
On Monday, CBS’s Stephen Colbert alleged that the network forbade him from airing an interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico over concerns about a potential FCC equal time rule violation. On Tuesday, CBS denied the allegation and said The Late Show was not prohibited from airing the interview but gave Colbert advice on how equal time could be fulfilled, but The Late Show balked at the suggestions and opted to put the interview on YouTube instead. Later on Tuesday, Colbert declared that CBS’s lawyers know “damn well” that they approved every word he said.
Colbert claimed, “We obeyed our network and put the interview on YouTube, where it’s gotten millions of views. And I can see why. Talarico is an interesting guy. I don’t know if he should be the senator, but it was a good discussion. I wish we should have put it on the show where no one would’ve watched it.”
Of course Colbert thought it was a good discussion. The whole point was to smear conservatives as bad Christians. Regardless, Colbert also huffed, “But here’s where I do want to tell the lawyers how to do their jobs. They know damn well that every word of my script last night was approved by CBS’s lawyers, who, for the record, approve every script that goes on the air, whether it’s about equal time or this image of frogs having sex.”
Christy didn’t really respond to Colbert beyond his whining that conservatives were portrayed as bad Christians, something he didn’t actually disprove.
Christy used another Feb. 18 post to lash out at another TV host for supporting Colbert:
MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell spent the early part of Tuesday’s edition of The Last Word demanding that President Trump be impeached for allegedly receiving bribes from ABC and CBS because, according to him, CBS’s decision to not allow Stephen Colbert to interview Texas Senate candidate James Talarico follows the same pattern as the decision to pay Trump $16 million as part of a 60 Minutes-related settlement.
O’Donnell urged viewers to “remember this about the CBS lawyers: they are the weakest, most cowardly corporate lawyers in America. They are actually in a tie with ABC’s lawyers, who we will get to in a moment. The CBS lawyers who are now trying to tell Stephen Colbert, who can be a guest on his show, work for a parent company that agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit by Donald Trump against 60 Minutes, which Donald Trump had no chance of winning. Absolutely zero chance of winning.”
It is worth noting that O’Donnell is assuming Colbert’s version of events is the truth, but CBSinsists that it did not force Colbert to relegate the interview to YouTube but instead simply offered suggestions on how to fulfill any equal time obligations.
Christy offered no reason CBS should be trusted over Colbert. Instead, he whined:
The actual reason why CBS finds itself in this equal time predicament is because 214 out of Stephen Colbert’s 215 political guests from September 2022 to December 2025 have been liberals or Democrats. The one exception, Liz Cheney, was only barely an exception. With percentages over 99 percent, someone was eventually going to dust off the equal time rules.
Christy did not explain why Colbert must be subject to equal time rules, given that talk shows have traditionally been exempted from them.
Having realized the MRC bought into Colbert’s plan whether it wanted to or not, Bannister quickly cranked out a Feb. 18 propaganda piece about it:
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr said at a press event Wednesday that he got a big laugh when he looked back at the way CBS “Late Show” Host Stephen Colbert used a hoax to manipulate the media this week.
Rebuking the legacy media’s blind regurgitation of Colbert’s claim that CBS prohibited him from airing an interview with Democrat Texas Senate primary candidate James Talarico because the FCC banned the interview, Chairman Carr pointed out that even CBS says that neither the network nor the FCC prevented Colbert from airing the interview.
Instead, the media-savvy Rep. Talarico (D-Texas) and Colbert played a hilarious hoax on the all-too-predictable media, Carr explained.
[…]
“Yesterday was a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media,” Carr said, mocking the way media were duped into doing the bidding of Colbert and Talarico:
Yet the MRC, it can be argued, was also “duped” into Colbert’s narrative. Unsurprisingly, Bannister refused to note this fact, let alone any viewpoint alternative to Carr.
Christy still appeared to be a little sore about buy into his narrative in a Feb. 19 post:
Those trying to turn CBS’s Stephen Colbert into a free speech martyr for the James Talarico-equal time controversy suffered a setback on Wednesday as Colbert welcomed Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff to The Late Show. Unfortunately, those who would like the late night hosts at least pretend to put in an effort to have some sort of balance on their shows also suffered a setback as the duo warned of impending doom if Democrats don’t win in November.
[…]
It’s ironic that Ossoff lamented that television hosts face official censorship while conducting an interview on television with that host. If Colbert and Ossoff want to know why all their warnings of impending authoritarianism fall flat, that would be a good place to start looking.
Christy seems to have forgotten that Colbert is being pulled off the air next month as an apparent condition of CBS’ owner settling a lawsuit with President Trump.
Thte same day, Tim Graham dismissed the contretemps as a “stunt”:
Stephen Colbert is getting the Jimmy Kimmel Free Speech Hero award this week on the leftist cable networks for his stunt putting an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico on YouTube instead of CBS. He claimed CBS banned him from putting Talarico on air. Then CBS put out a statement implying Colbert was lying, that they only offered “guidance” about how to fulfill equal-time requirements that might be enforced.
On Tuesday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper,former New York Times reporter Bill Carter and former National Review writer Jonah Goldberg both lined up like good liberals for the Colbert Publicity Train. Tapper tried to glide past Colbert’s claims on “how aggressively they gave that guidance,” but Carter lectured it just had to be Fear of Trump driving everything:
Graham then whined that Colbert didn’t have on enough right-wing guests:
Since 2022, Colbert has put on 214 liberal or Democrat guests to one Republican — if you count Liz Cheney. (Let’s not.) Does anyone think Colbert won’t have another 20 or 30 Trump-trashing liberals on his show before it all ends? The guest list is pretty much unanimous, but the “chilling effect” is the idea that someone (including another leftist) might get equal time?
We don’t recall Graham ever complaining that Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters didn’t have on enough liberal guests.
Graham continued the “stunt” narrative in his Feb. 20 podcast:
It was a good week for NewsBusters issues. In the new eruption of leftist protest over anyone demanding Stephen Colbert provide “Equal Time” to their incessant tilt, we point out again that all the comedy shows tilt dramatically to the left, just like The View.Whoopi Goldberg felt pressed to address the NewsBusters scoop on her place in the Epstein files.
NewsBusters associate editor Nick Fondacaro and MRC Video content creator Nick Kangadis joined the show. While the liberal networks expressed partisan awe and amazement over Colbert’s allegedly masterful interview and controversy-stoking with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, the supreme irony in all of this is that our Alex Christy reports that Colbert’s show since September 2022 has platformed 214 liberals or Democrats, and just one Republican – and that was Liz Cheney, after she left office in defeat. Equal time is never observed in late-night “comedy.” Somehow, democracy is “dying” not from a guest count of 215-0, but that anyone wants to balance it in any way.
This whole controversy was a stunt – a stunt designed to promote Talarico’s bid for the Senate as a sort of Beto O’Rourke 2.0 – as if the original Beto was a winner. If the FCC required “equal time” here right before the primary, the beneficiary would be Rep. Jasmine Crockett, not a Republican. So Colbert’s stunt is anti-Crockett.
But if it was a “stunt,” it was a successful one, as P.J. Gladnick grudgingly admitted:
It’s possible that Politico hasn’t been this happy since the 2020 election was “fortified.”
By pretending to be censored, which did not happen according to CBS, Late Show host Stephen Colbert was able to gain more viewers than usual to his interview on YouTube with the Democrat primary candidate for senator from Texas, James Talarico. Politico briefly acknowledged the trickery involved in their Wednesday Playbook celebration by Dasha Burns and Jack Blanchard, “The Talarico moment.”
[…]
So did Colbert refuse to offer equal time to Talarico’s primary opponents? We didn’t find the answer in Politico because they didn’t bother to ask. Perhaps because it would have ruined their celebrations of Colbert pulling off a campaign stunt to obviously help Talarico.
Gladnick did not explain why CBS’ word on Colbert must be trusted, giving thet they’re canceling him next month.
Gladnick was grousing about the “stunt” in a Feb. 28 post by invoking old criticisms of public radio:
After being deprived of its federal funding by Republicans, it’s only natural that NPR is going to sound especially bitter about President Trump engaging in what they claim is “media censorship.” The ruse here is that Stephen Colbert was somehow unable to put leftist Democrat James Talarico on his Late Show because of Trump. But the Trump administration didn’t stop it. CBS’s lawyers warned him it could be an “equal time” violation.
We know what happened next — massive YouTube views for Colbert and Talarico, leading to millions of dollars in donations to Talarico’s Senate campaign against Rep. Jasmine Crockett — who could ask for “equal time.” On Wednesday’s edition of The NPR Politics Podcast, they turned to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik to warn about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and his expressed aim to investigate “equal time” on remarkably one-sided shows like Colbert’s.
Graham brought up another old grievance after an NPR panelist said “Jimmy Kimmel made some remarks that offended the president’s supporters in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk”:
Jimmy Kimmel’s “remarks” were lying about Charlie Kirk’s killer being a “MAGA” bro, the opposite of the truth, hence they “offended” Trump fans. Folkenflik channeled the Left, that “some of the critics are saying that they’re actually self-censoring” because of Trump and Carr.
While Graham did note in the transcript that someone said “we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way” in relation to Kimmel, he was silent on the fact that it was Trump FCC chief Brendan Carr, and Kimmel was suspended for a week after that implied threat.
Graham went on to whine that “Naturally, like other liberals, NPR had to talk about conservative talk-radio shows would fail the ‘equal time’ rules,” insisting without evidence that “Conservative radio hosts would be glad to put some Democrats on their shows for equal time, but how likely is it that the Democrats would accept?!” Has Graham or the MRC ever endorsed equal-time rules being applied to right-wing talk radio? Not that we’re aware.
I heard that you have a lot of "parts" AKA series in your articles. You should provide a list of articles with parts so that I can read them in order.