Barack Obama just gave his first presidential center interview to the one man on television who once said he needed to "drink him in."
CBS already answered that relationship with a cancellation notice and a $40 million annual loss.
Senator John Kennedy watched the reunion tour and said the quiet part out loud — and what he said next is going to make your day.
Kennedy Dropped the Verdict America Already Knew
The Louisiana senator went on Fox News' The Will Cain Show the morning after Obama's May 5 appearance and didn't hold back.
"I also got a kick out of Mr. Colbert," Kennedy said. "He and President Obama are obviously best buds. Maybe they ought to get a motel room or something."
Kennedy went further. He said Colbert "was shallow as a puddle" — but that Colbert's personal vanity had never let him see it that way.
"His problem is not his vanity or his intelligence," Kennedy said. "It's his numbers."
The Late Show was hemorrhaging $40 million a year from CBS's balance sheet. The network pulled the plug in July 2025. The final episode airs May 21, and Obama's farewell lap on May 5 was the swan song nobody outside of blue-checked Twitter actually asked for.
The Buddy System No One Voted For
Obama didn't choose some neutral journalist for his first interview from the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. He chose Colbert — the same man who emceed a $26 million Democratic fundraiser for Obama, Biden, and Bill Clinton at Radio City Music Hall in 2024. The same man whose show booked 43 liberal political guests in 2025 alone and exactly zero conservatives.
Obama used his couch time to warn against "politicizing the criminal justice system" — a pointed swipe at the Trump administration delivered to the one host guaranteed to nod along.
Kennedy wasn't nodding.
"I wish that President Obama had talked to Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Biden about that point," Kennedy fired back on Fox News. "They prosecuted a former president of the United States – then Donald Trump, now President Trump – and not only was he a former president, he was a current candidate running against Garland's own boss."
The Fox News audience already knew what Kennedy was saying. Obama launched Russiagate against a president-elect, watched his Justice Department weaponize federal power against a political opponent for four years, and then sat down with his biggest media cheerleader to lecture America about prosecutorial independence.
https://twitter.com/SenJohnKennedy/status/2052138207521714258
What $40 Million a Year Buys You
CBS didn't cancel Colbert because his ratings collapsed. He was still number one in his time slot — averaging over 2.7 million viewers. CBS canceled him because late-night television's business model had already collapsed around him. Ad revenue for the genre dropped 50 percent between 2018 and 2024, and no ratings trophy was going to fix that math.
A NewsBusters study found that 92 percent of The Late Show's jokes in 2025 targeted Republicans. Since 2022, Colbert hosted 176 left-leaning guests and one Republican. His show was never television. It was a political operation with a desk and a bandleader.
Kennedy understood what CBS finally admitted: Americans stopped watching not because they couldn't find the channel, but because they didn't want what Colbert was selling.
"He was losing CBS $40 million a year because nobody was watching," Kennedy said. "So CBS told him to sit his 50 cent ass down and they said, 'You're fired.'"
Here's what the media won't tell you. Obama lecturing about prosecutorial abuse while sharing a couch with his most devoted television ally isn't a coincidence — it's a confession. When you've lost the argument, you retreat to friendly rooms. Obama chose Colbert's set the same way he's always chosen his audiences: carefully, safely, away from anyone who might push back. Kennedy pushed back. Millions of conservatives on Fox News heard every word of it. And CBS — which spent a decade writing $40 million checks to broadcast Obama's preferred message to an audience that had already left — got the last word first, back in July 2025, when it finally did what the market had been demanding for years.
That's not a cancellation. That's a verdict.
Sources:
- John Kennedy, "Obama Has Always Been Better at 'Pandering' Than 'Persuasion,'" Fox News, May 7, 2026.
- "Kennedy Suggests Obama and Colbert 'Get a Motel Room' After Cozy Interview," Washington Examiner, May 7, 2026.
- "Obama Chooses Supporter Stephen Colbert for Debut Interview at Controversial Presidential Center," Fox News, April 23, 2026.
- "Inside CBS' 'Agonizing Decision' to Cancel Colbert's Top-Rated Late-Night Show," CNN Business, July 18, 2025.
- "Colbert's Left-Wing Late Show Became 'Therapy' Session for Democrats," NewsBusters/Yahoo Entertainment, July 26, 2025.
- "Late-Night TV Got More Liberal in 2025, Per Study," Deadline, January 6, 2026.
