“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert provoked laughter from his audience when he praised CNN for allegedly being “objective.”
There was one problem, however – Colbert wasn’t joking.
Colbert humiliated himself while interviewing CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday night.
When he tried to suggest that CNN is “objective” in its reporting on presidential candidates because the network’s reporters “just report the news as it is,” the New York City audience cracked up.
Collins appeared on the late-night comedy show where she discussed learning about President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race.
She also discussed the media’s relationship with President Donald Trump and how Kamala Harris had shaken up the 2024 race.
Collins claimed that the Trump campaign had been thrown off by the sudden change of the Democrat nominee after Biden stepped aside last month.
However, Trump was among the first to predict that Harris would replace Biden on the ticket.
Colbert then started to praise Collins’ news organization in a lead-up to a question.
“I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is,” he told Collins as audience members started to laugh in the background.
“No, no no —” Colbert objected while waving his hand and grinning at the audience’s reaction.
“CNN makes a…” he trailed off.
“Was that supposed to be a laugh line?” Collins reacted with a smirk.
“It wasn’t supposed to be, but I guess it is,” Colbert joked back before quickly pivoting to his question.
WATCH:
The interaction was first spotted by the Media Research Center’s Brent Baker, who shared a clip on X.
“Not even NYC lefties buy CNN as objective,” he wrote.
During the Trump presidency, CNN developed a reputation as a partisan news organization due to the anti-Trump tone that dominated the network’s primetime programming.
Then-White House reporter Jim Acosta was regularly combative with members of the administration.
As a result, Trump referred to CNN as “fake news” on a regular basis for years.
TV producer Chris Licht, formerly the executive producer of Colbert’s show, took over the network in 2022 and made it clear he wanted to dial back the left-leaning opinion programming that engulfed the network under his predecessor, Jeff Zucker.
He made overtures to Republicans who had been alienated by its past coverage and fired some of its well-known liberal anchors and reporters, but Zucker-era staffers remained throughout the company.
Licht was eventually fired in 2023 after reportedly losing the faith of the long-struggling network’s liberal employees.
Left-wing commentators Jeffrey Toobin, Don Lemon, and Brian Stelter have made appearances on the network in recent months after being pushed out under Licht’s leadership.
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