Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov
Censoring Stephen Colbert Backfires
18 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
And I'm Jessica Tarloff.
How are you, Jess?
I'm really good. How are you? Where are you?
I am in, and I'm very self-conscious as I tell people to unsubscribe from ChatGBT. I'm in Zermatt, where I am not skiing. And I've never been more grateful to be on this podcast with you because I get to not have to ski with my family.
Do you just apres ski? Is that your move? You're like, I'll meet you for fondue?
I'm all caps apres. I'm the life of the party at the fondue and beer. Oh, sure. But no, the skiing thing, I would pay a lot of money to not to ever have to ski again. I think it's the most overrated sport in the world.
I think you are paying a lot of money to not have to ski again.
Oh, that's a fair point.
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Chapter 2: Why was James Tallarico's appearance on Colbert canceled?
And it's just not going to serve them well. And as evidence of that, the first week that they had their new anchor for CBS News, their viewership went from 5 million a night to 4 million. I will say this. It's keeping CBS in the news, which is literally going from irrelevant to less than irrelevant. So they're in the news a lot, but for the wrong reasons.
So Paramount CBS, huge loser here, no doubt about it. The Trump administration cements the notion they don't believe in a free press, which only massively juices the viewership of this interview.
The other loser, unfortunately, through no fault of our own, is Representative Crockett, who Tallarico just got this wind in his sails where he's seen as this resistance fighter that everyone is so scared of. The Empire has put out all sorts of hits on him, which makes him look like a bigger threat.
And obviously, Colbert is an enormous winner here because he continues to look like, you know, his hat is just starched bright white. But this is effectively, you know, this wasn't censorship. This was amplification. Brendan Carr just made Tallarico famous in Texas. Tallarico could have raised $20 or $30 million. It wouldn't have done as much for his campaign as Brendan Carr just did.
I like it. It's also an interesting contrast. You know, we just had the Munich Security Conference and the right wing and Republican Party here is always bitching about censorship abroad. Right. And how we're the bastion of free speech here. And I'm pretty sure that there's stuff on TV in Germany and in England that Brendan Carr would have his panties in a bunch about here.
And it's super embarrassing on that front. And you just see, I mean, no matter what story we're covering and, you know, we're going to talk about the Epstein files. We're going to talk about what's going on with immigration enforcement and ICE. It's just like tick down the lines of the Constitution and say, oh, guess this is irrelevant now. Oh, guess this is irrelevant now.
Oh, guess this is irrelevant now. And it's such a huge opportunity for Democrats now. to come out and just be on the side of the Constitution, right? Like that these are our core values, that speech is protected. And I mean, hiding behind the equal time rule is not going to get you anywhere since Jasmine Crockett has been on Colbert. And I'm sure Stephen Colbert would welcome Ken Paxton
onto the show. I could talk about his legislative career, also his affairs, or John Cornyn, who I think would have a much more successful interview, and he doesn't have any skeletons in his closet as far as I know, but he doesn't want to have his feet held to the proverbial fire over the Trump administration's policies, so they're not interested in it.
But this idea that—and this is why I started with paging Ted Cruz—that there's no slippery slope here. And I hope the Democrats always stand on the side of the Constitution. But there are going to be ruthless people out there that, once the Democrats come back into power, are saying we should do exactly to them what they did to us. And they wouldn't be wrong for it.
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Chapter 3: How did CBS's decision impact public perception of corporate media?
So they get their tariff numbers from AI, but they don't bother to run this through. I can't imagine the PR executive or the strategist at the Trump administration saying, yeah, Colbert won't say anything. This won't bring more heat and excitement.
Like, Colbert isn't even afraid of his own boss at this point. He's like, I have three months left to go. Like, YOLO, please.
Colbert is going to, I mean, his show is ending. If they had just ignored Colbert, quite frankly, he just wouldn't be nearly as relevant right now because his show loses a lot of money. And this is, you know, media companies are capitalist. But this comes across as, I'm being a dead horse here, such extraordinary censorship.
And I would imagine that a lot of moderate Republicans are going to say, what will be interesting is to see how many Republicans come out and say this was a bad move. Because it won't be a litmus test of their backbone. It'll be a litmus test of their assessment if whether Trump is losing power.
popularity and losing a step because i find these guys start to find their testicles when they think there's less and less danger of a blowback from the trump administration it's sort of almost like a weakness indicator of whether they think that the trump fever is about to break yeah and it's also an easy one you know what i mean like you don't have to come out against his immigration policy if you just say yeah i believe in free speech
let Tallarico be on Colbert and air it on a regular network instead of it being a YouTube thing. But it is a good precursor for whatever YouTube show or podcast or whatever Colbert is going to be doing come May when he no longer has this job anymore. I feel like you should take a few months off at least. Everyone needs a break.
All right. Let's take a quick break. Stay with us.
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