DISCLAIMER: This article was first published on May 21, 2026
Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater on Thursday night, someone got down on their knees with chalk and wrote the editorial CBS had been running from all year. “Thank you Stephen, and f*** you CBS and Donald Trump.” The network sent someone to erase it and managed to make it more famous in the process.
New video shows a message in chalk outside of Stephen Colbert’s final show as CBS washes it away:
“Thank you Stephen, and fuck you CBS and Donald Trump.”pic.twitter.com/PklnWvO3vY
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) May 21, 2026
Inside the theater, meanwhile, an era was ending.
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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired its final episode on Thursday, closing out a 33-year-old institution after CBS cancelled the show earlier this year.
Just days before the cancellation, Colbert had mocked a $16 million settlement between Trump and Paramount Global, CBS’s parent company, calling it a “big fat bribe” on air. Critics argued the settlement was meant to help Paramount smooth out regulatory approval for its pending Skydance merger.
“It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away,” Colbert told his audience when the news broke. The audience booed. He said, “Yeah, I share your feelings,” then thanked his 200 staff members and got back to work.
Bruce Springsteen showed up for the second to last episode, performed a stripped down acoustic set, then told the audience: “I am here in support of Stephen, because you’re the first guy in America who lost his show because we’ve got a president who can’t take a joke.”
Colbert told fellow hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and Jimmy Fallon on the Strike Force Five podcast that his entire staff would be out of a job the morning after the finale. “No one’s got a job after that night. I think the next day, everyone’s fired. We all have to be out by the next Friday.”
CBS maintained the cancellation was “purely a financial decision” with no connection to the show’s content or Paramount’s regulatory situation. Jimmy Kimmel pulled his own show off air Thursday night out of solidarity, telling his audience: “Don’t ever watch CBS again, but watch Thursday night to wish Stephen and our friends at the Late Show a fond farewell.”
Through his final week, Colbert insisted on avoiding anger and insults over the cancellation. He left that to Springsteen, to his audience, and to whoever arrived outside the theater with chalk on Thursday night.
Featured image via X screengrab
