STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Stephen Colbert responded to President Trump overnight. ABC took Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely, you will recall, under pressure from the administration, and then Trump said yesterday that late-night shows aren't, quote, "allowed" to criticize him. Colbert spoke directly to the president on "The Late Show," which CBS canceled earlier this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW")
STEPHEN COLBERT: Since the beginning, since Steve Allen, these shows have always talked about the current president, and that happens to be you. That's why you haven't heard me do too many Chester A. Arthur jokes.
(LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Although, think of how funny they could be. Here to talk about the future of late-night TV is Bill Carter, author of the book, "The War For Late Night." Good morning, sir.
BILL CARTER: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I guess when you wrote "The War For Late Night" you were thinking about the competition between different shows, but now we've got a different kind of war.
CARTER: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: What have you thought about as this spreads from Jimmy Kimmel to talk of further cancellations?
CARTER: Well, I think we're in a totally new territory that's never been explored before, and I don't know where it's going to end up, but it seems like the way the administration wants it to end up is to literally get rid of all the people who are doing it (laughter).
INSKEEP: I guess we don't even know at this point that Jimmy Kimmel himself is going away. There are reports of further talks with ABC. His show...
CARTER: Yep.
INSKEEP: ...Is paused and not canceled. First, is Stephen Colbert correct? I mean, it seems to me, just thinking it through, that it is correct, that just about every late-night host has made fun of just about every president.
CARTER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's part of the game. In fact, if you were a writer for a late-night show, and I've talked to many of them, your job - your first job in the day would be the - in those days, to look through every newspaper, now, every website, probably, just to find the news because that's what you wrote the jokes off.
And, of course, the president makes news every day. So he always was the subject of jokes. And some of them chafed at times over it. But, look, what was different, really, Steve, was that it was never really point-of-view jokes. You know what I mean? They would make jokes about the president's mistakes, et cetera, and make fun of him over various things, but it didn't seem like they were coming from a political point of view.
INSKEEP: Ah, now, this is very interesting.
CARTER: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Endless mockery of Bill Clinton, for example, Endless mockery...
CARTER: Absolutely.
INSKEEP: ...Of George W. Bush. David Letterman was talking about this at a festival. He said, I mocked every president. None of them ever came after me. Is there...
CARTER: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...As conservatives would assert, something different about the last several years, where the whole crop of late-night hosts on traditional broadcast TV seem to have a particular viewpoint on Trump?
CARTER: There's something very different over the last few years. His name is Donald Trump (laughter). And Donald Trump's approach to everything is so different that it has inflamed passions among certainly the hosts and the writers of these shows. I mean, you know, it's been a us-versus-them presidency, and it's sort of an us-versus-them relationship in late night on the same scale.
INSKEEP: Is it kind of not possible to do that older style of comedy where you're kind of light and above it all?
CARTER: Well...
INSKEEP: I mean, if you look, Jimmy...
CARTER: ...Well...
INSKEEP: ...Fallon does a little more of that than the others, but you go on.
CARTER: ...Interesting, he does. He does. Jimmy Fallon has always said, I'm not that kind of comic. I like everybody to have fun, sort of his approach. But it's notable that when Trump talks about people he wants to get rid of, he includes Fallon. He, you know, in his first comment about the departure of Kimmel from the air the other night, he said, now it's NBC's - going to be NBC's turn to get rid of Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.
So he pointedly included him. So it's not really now anybody trying to make a joke. It is anybody. It's - the edge of a political commentary, which Kimmel and Colbert absolutely have when they go after Trump, is not there with Fallon, but it doesn't matter. He's - he goes after Fallon, too.
INSKEEP: Revealing distinction from Bill Carter, Editor-at-Large for LateNighter. Thanks so much.
CARTER: OK.
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