On February 17, 2026, Stephen Colbert revealed on air that CBS network lawyers had explicitly barred him from broadcasting a scheduled interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a leading Democratic candidate in the Texas US Senate primary. CBS cited fears over the FCC's “equal time” rule — despite the fact that late-night talk shows and news interviews have been exempt from this rule for decades.
The censorship stems directly from Trump's FCC. Chairman Brendan Carr issued a January 21 letter suggesting the exemption should no longer apply to shows he characterized as being “motivated by partisan purposes.” After Talarico appeared on “The View” earlier in February, the FCC opened an investigation into a possible “equal time” violation — sending a clear signal to every broadcast network: host a Democrat on your show, and we will investigate you.
Colbert defied CBS's instructions — he had also been told not to even raise the matter on air, which he proceeded to do anyway. He told his audience, “He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers that we could not have him on the broadcast.” The interview was posted on YouTube as an “online-only exclusive” since FCC rules don't apply to streaming.
On February 19, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr went on Fox News's The Ingraham Angle and explicitly confirmed the threat. He warned he would “enforce the law” and “hold broadcasters accountable,” framing the equal time rule as “stopping legacy media from picking winners and losers in elections.” Carr dismissed the entire controversy as “Democrat-on-Democrat violence” — as though a government regulator threatening to punish a network for hosting a political candidate is just infighting. The YouTube-only interview has accumulated over 7 million views, proving the Streisand effect: blocking it generated far more attention than airing it ever would have.
This is textbook government censorship through regulatory intimidation. Trump has repeatedly attacked late-night hosts and in November claimed that late-night mockery constitutes “probably illegal” misconduct. Now his FCC chairman is going on Fox News to publicly threaten broadcasters who host Democrats. A media company self-censored a political interview because it feared government retaliation — and the head of the FCC confirmed on national television that the fear was justified. That is not how the First Amendment is supposed to work in America.