Stephen Colbert says CBS pulled candidate interview ahead of early voting in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Late-night host Stephen Colbert said his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Tallarico was pulled from Monday night’s broadcast over network concerns that it would violate regulatory guidance from the Trump administration on giving equal time to political candidates.

The case came just hours before early voting began Tuesday in the Texas primary, which features heated races for the Senate nomination in both parties.

“He was supposed to be here, but our network lawyers, who contacted us directly, told us in no uncertain terms that we could not allow him to air,” Colbert said on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

He watches: CBS says Colbert’s cancellation was a financial decision, but the timing raises questions

“Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not let him participate, I couldn’t mention that I didn’t include him. And since my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

CBS disputed Colbert’s account, denying telling his show that it could not interview Tallarico. Instead, CBS said Tuesday, “the program was provided with legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC’s equal time rule.”

Tallarico is in a hotly contested race for the Democratic nomination, as media organizations navigate changing broadcast guidelines issued under the Trump administration that govern how interviews with political candidates are conducted. His main opponent is US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, both of whom have built national profiles through viral social media clips.

On the Republican side, four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn faces the political battle of his career against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. Paxton boosted his campaign with a rally Monday night in Tyler, East Texas.

The FCC has warned talk show hosts

Tallarico posted a roughly minute-long clip of his interview with Colbert on Channel X, calling it “the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.” He planned to hold a rally Tuesday evening in Austin.

“I think Donald Trump is concerned that we are about to flip Texas,” Tallarico said in a statement. “This is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.”

Broadcast networks have been required to give equal time to political candidates, but this rule has not traditionally been applied to talk shows. In January, the FCC issued new guidance warning late-night and daytime hosts that they needed to give political candidates equal time, with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr questioning the talk show exemption and positing that the hosts were “motivated by partisan purposes.”

“No evidence has been provided to the FCC that the interview segment of any late-night or daytime television talk show currently on the air would qualify for the real news exemption,” the public notice said.

In his comments, Colbert noted that the equal time requirement applies to streaming platforms, not live broadcasts. Subsequently, his roughly 15-minute interview with Talarico was posted on Colbert’s show’s YouTube page, with the host specifically noting that the clip was only appearing online and not on broadcast.

Voting in Texas begins with Colbert on his way out

The FCC did not immediately respond Tuesday to a message seeking comment.

But Carr, who was appointed by Trump to lead the agency last year, has often criticized network talk shows, suggesting last year that an investigation into ABC’s “The View” — whose hosts have frequently criticized Trump — over the exemption might be “useful.”

Colbert’s days in the host chair are now limited after CBS announced last year that it was canceling his show next May for financial reasons, shuttering a decades-old television institution in a changing media landscape.

But the timing of the announcement — three days after Colbert criticized the settlement between Trump and Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story — prompted two U.S. senators to publicly question the motives behind the move, which led to the removal of one of Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics.

The candidates are looking to avoid runoffs

Meanwhile, Tallarico and Crockett hope to avoid a May 26 runoff by getting at least 50% of the Democratic vote in the March 3 primary. Paxton is also trying to avoid a runoff, and as of Friday, the only ad his campaign had released on a relatively low scale was an attack on Hunt.

Hunt is trying to appeal to voters who are looking for an alternative to Cornyn but are uneasy about Paxton. A Texas attorney general won a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges and reached a plea deal to end a long-running securities fraud case, but now faces a contentious divorce over adultery allegations.

Hunt released a new ad on Tuesday, including photos of himself with Trump, bashing Cornyn during his long political year and declaring: “This is our moment to end the status quo.”

But Paxton’s campaign has been airing its own ad featuring videos of him with Trump since Friday. The president had not endorsed any candidate as of Monday. Paxton portrayed Cornyn on Monday night as a creature of the Washington establishment, adding: “Well, I’m not their person and I’ll never be their person.”

GOP Concerns About Paxton

Early voting began with Paxton looking like the GOP front-runner, even though Cornyn’s campaign and allied political action committees have spent more than $54 million on TV ads since last year, according to ad tracking service AdImpact. Paxton believes he is better known than Cornyn.

Republican Senate leaders in Washington say that as the GOP nominee, Paxton will need hundreds of millions of dollars more for defense in the general election than Cornyn will — and that the party should not have to spend in a state that Trump carried by more than 13 percentage points.

Cornyn addressed these concerns at a rally Tuesday in Austin.

“We will pay the price for having an albatross like a corrupt prosecutor around their neck,” he said. “This will impact everyone on the ballot.”

Kennard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas. Associated Press reporter David Bauder in New York and AP reporter Tom Beaumont in Tyler, Texas, contributed to this report.