American television host Stephen Colbert slammed his network CBS for denying that it pulled an interview with Rep. James Talarico from The Late Show. On Tuesday night’s broadcast, Colbert said that the network’s lawyers told his staff the segment would not air. The rule generally requires broadcast networks to provide comparable airtime to political candidates during election periods. He said that “every word” of Monday’s script had been cleared by CBS lawyers before the Talarico interview was abruptly dropped. I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network,” Colbert said.

Source: The Telegraph February 18, 2026 10:29 UTC