Trump Targets Two More TV Hosts After CBS Axes Stephen Colbert

President Trump says two more late-night TV hosts are “next,” just days after CBS ended The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

“The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”

This is exactly what it looks like. Colbert was canceled mere days after he called out CBS parent company Paramount for capitulating to the Trump administration by agreeing to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit over how they edited a 60 Minutes interview of failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, something news organizations regularly do for the sake of time. 

Colbert argued that Paramount was well aware that Trump’s lawsuit was “completely without merit” but agreed to pay a “big fat bribe” to ease its sale to Skydance Media—a deal that required Trump’s approval. The president has mocked Colbert since his cancellation, calling for Jimmy Kimmel’s job next, and stating that Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them. This Tuesday is just more of the same. Kimmel’s show is hosted by ABC, which also settled with Trump for millions of dollars after George Stephanopoulos said that the president was liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll, instead of just sexual abuse.  

The president is more focused on getting late-night talk show hosts fired than on governing. CBS sacrificed Colbert for political goodwill, dumping a popular host to kiss the king’s ring. And now Trump is calling for more heads. Only time will tell how the networks respond. 

Donald Trump’s administration is desperately trying to lure retired ICE agents back into the fold to help enact the president’s massive deportation campaign, according to The New York Times.

Trump administration officials have been reaching out directly to former officers in good standing and posting tailored offers on job portals attempting to recruit them with promises of hefty cash bonuses.

One email reviewed by the Times issued an “urgent call” to former law enforcement officers to “join OPERATION RETURN TO MISSION,” and included an offer for qualified candidates to collect up to $50,000 in bonuses.

“Ready to rejoin the mission and get up to a $50k signing bonus ON TOP OF rehired annuitant pay (pension + paycheck)?” read one LinkedIn post from Robert Hammer, acting executive associate director at Homeland Security Investigations. “Submit your application by Aug 1 to be eligible for the full recruitment incentives package.”

The Trump administration’s latest efforts come alongside comments from a former agency prosecutor that many ICE agents are seeking exit strategies, having become “unhappy” and experiencing “very low” morale as they face moral dilemmas about executing their jobs. Apparently, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s directive to execute a lofty 3,000 immigration arrests per day has rendered many in the service completely miserable.

As it turns out, ripping families apart and then subjecting them to inhumane prison conditions isn’t everyone’s dream job. Maybe the only people who can stomach it are the ones who have already been doing it. Still, the Trump administration has said it hopes to hire 10,000 ICE agents and 3,000 border patrol agents to conduct the president’s grotesque immigration policies.

Tom Homan’s responsibilities as border czar seemingly now include policing the bounds of acceptable dissent. On Tuesday, Homan fancifully blamed politicians’ criticisms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for an uptick in violence toward the agency’s personnel.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the border czar supported the practice of ICE agents concealing their identities with masks. “The masks, I think, are important. How do we get rid of the masks? Stop the hateful rhetoric,” he said, before alleging an eightfold increase in assaults on ICE personnel over last year.

Who, by Homan’s lights, is responsible for the rhetoric (and, in turn, the violence)? “I specifically mean members of Congress,” he said. “If members of Congress can compare ICE to the Nazis, that gives some of those people on the far left, the out of control people—it emboldens them to take action.”

Homan’s tone policing is consistent with other spurious attempts by the Trump administration to blame Democratic lawmakers for the reported (and exaggerated) increases in assaults against ICE agents.

Earlier this month, for instance, the White House issued a statement attributing a “surge” in assaults against ICE agents to “dangerous, inflammatory rhetoric from Democrat politicians.” The examples it provided, however, were all legitimate criticisms of ICE’s enforcement under Trump (likening the agents to “secret police” or “Gestapo,” for example, due to instances of masked, plainclothes officers plucking people off the street, at times for their political opinions) or of ICE in general (such as calls to abolish the agency).

In pointing the finger at Democratic rhetoric, the Trump administration conveniently ignores that the alleged increase in assaults comes as the agency, under Trump’s directives, has greatly increased the frequency of its operations—and become markedly more adversarial, embracing policing tactics that, according to law enforcement experts, put its agents in harm’s way.

But Homan would have you believe that the Trump administration couldn’t possibly be to blame. It must, instead, be the fault of Democratic lawmakers who have critical things to say about the increasingly unpopular force unleashed on American communities.

The president’s team is trying to stomp out coverage of his prior comments about young girls amid fallout regarding his alleged ties to pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, torched The Daily Beast for dredging up remarks that Donald Trump made during an interview with Howard Stern in 2006, when he told the radio show host that the best part about being Donald Trump was that he could get “all the girls” he wanted—if he wasn’t married to his wife.

“Do you think you could now be banging 24-year-olds?” Stern asked.

“Oh, absolutely. I have no trouble,” a 60-year-old Trump replied.

“Would you do it?” pressed Stern, to which Trump said he had “no problem.”

But then Trump got into a questionable back-and-forth with the show’s co-host, Robin Quivers, who asked the real estate mogul: “Do you have an age limit?”

“No, no, I have no age—,” Trump started, before backtracking. “I mean, I have an age—I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.”

Trump was referring to former Representative Mark Foley, who had resigned that year for sending sexually explicit messages to underage boys. One of Foley’s victims was 16 years old at the time. Trump’s aversion to the ousted lawmaker was apparently temporary, however: The Florida Republican was spotted sitting in a reserved section, directly behind Trump, at a 2016 campaign rally.

When asked about Trump’s old remarks, Cheung lashed out. “The disgusting insinuation by The Daily Beast is beyond the pale and does a great disservice to survivors. The Daily Beast is devoid of morals or compassion, all because they want to play political games,” Cheung said.

Trump has a well-documented history with Epstein. Prior to his death, the New York financier described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times; the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express”; and Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last week. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch–owned paper over the alleged letter Friday.

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday approved a motion to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, which would force her to testify before Congress.

Maxwell was Epstein’s girlfriend and main accomplice and is currently incarcerated for helping him traffic and rape hundreds of women and girls. Maxwell’s subpoena would be a dramatic move, as she is widely believed to have particularly sensitive information on other prominent figures who were engaging in these horrendous acts alongside Epstein.

The motion was introduced by Tim Burchett, a Republican, further confirming the legitimacy of the internal rift that the Trump administration caused when it closed the Epstein case earlier this month. Trump has been on an intense defend and distract campaign since he first received backlash from his base, continuously acting as if his base is irrational for demanding the answers he’d been promising them for years.

On Monday, Trump attacked another Republican, Thomas Massie, after he filed a discharge petition for the files in full. Now Epstein’s closest confidant may be testifying in front of the entire country. The president’s questionable relationship to Maxwell and Epstein has been well reported. Time will only tell what the tone of his reaction will be.