Jon Stewart sends direct message to media company executives: “Sack the f*** up!”
The TV show host threw the book at media executives and directors: don’t back down in the face of authoritarianism.
When it comes to being fair, Jon Stewart usually toes the line well enough to hit out at just about anyone. Right now, he’s a Trump critic and what the former president would likely call “part of the fake news media,” but that’s not to say he’s pro-Democrat. The TV show host, if he feels it’s warranted, will attack just about anything with a pulse — and he didn’t hold back last night.
The media world was shocked when it was announced that CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was getting axed, just a few days after Colbert criticised parent company Paramount Global for settling a defamation lawsuit with Trump — calling it “a big fat bribe.”
Curiously, information leaks regarding the supposed dire state of the show have been drip-fed to media outlets all week. This is despite the fact that The Late Show currently tops U.S. ratings and boasts an average of 2.4 million viewers per night. CBS called the cancellation a “purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop,” but the backlash shows just how few people are buying that excuse.
Jon Stewart reacts to CBS cancelling "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and tells corporations and advertisers to "sack up" pic.twitter.com/v8MrNpg28w
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 22, 2025
“Sack the f--- up” or “go f--- yourself”
Stewart ripped into Paramount’s decision on his latest show, reminding the corporation that the shows “that [they] now seek to cancel, censor, and control — a not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those f***ing shows. That’s what made you that money — shows that say something, shows that take a stand, shows that are unafraid.”
He continued: “Believe me, this is not a ‘We speak truth to power.’ We don’t. We speak opinions to television cameras. And if you believe, as corporations or as networks, that you can make yourselves so innocuous — that you can serve a gruel so flavourless that you will never again be on the boy king’s radar — (a) why will anyone watch you? And (b) you are f***ing wrong.” He ended with a choir singing to his interjections of “sack the f--- up” and “go f--- yourself.” Fair words from a fair man.
Stewart and Colbert worked together on The Daily Show before The Colbert Report launched in 2005. After taking over from David Letterman in 2015, Colbert turned himself into the top-rated late-night host in the U.S.; CBS getting rid of him — under the guise of declining viewership and lost revenue — feels like one big step toward authoritarianism in Donald Trump’s America.
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If the media is too scared, too pressured, too fragile to criticize the political elite, then we really are moving toward what Kim Jong-Un might call “a people’s republic.” Colbert will continue hosting The Late Show until May 2026.
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