COMEY: Again, those words are not in order. It rings in my ear as kind of, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

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TAPPER: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Comey referring there to the folklore about King Henry II. In the 12th century, King Henry voiced frustration with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, who had excommunicated bishops who defied church law, as depicted in the 1964 film, Beckett.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?

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TAPPER: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? And shortly thereafter, assassins came and killed the archbishop. The phrase has come to represent what happens when leaders want immoral actions carried on their behalf. But they also want plausible deniability. Now, there’s no evidence that President Trump, who has long railed against Stephen Colbert and other late night comedians who mock him, no evidence that he demanded that Colbert be fired or his show canceled. The final episode of the Colbert show airs in one week, next Thursday, May 21st.

Nor, as King Henry demonstrates, does there need to be a direct order. The people who ran Paramount, CBS’s mothership at the time that the cancellation was announced last July, Paramount at the time led by Shari Redstone, they were trying to get the Trump administration to approve a merger that would allow Shari Redstone and her team to sell the company to Skydance and they would all make a lot of money. I should note that since then, Skydance has taken over Paramount and the company right now is going through the regulatory process to take over CNN and its parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery.

But in any case, it was in the midst of the CBS Paramount merger last summer when Redstone and her company decided, quite surprisingly, to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They attributed the decision to economic reasons. They denied that it was political. Now, it is absolutely true that the economics of late night television have been challenging for quite some time due to a variety of factors including more streaming competition, declining advertising dollars, and on and on. Conan O’Brien’s late night show is no more.

Ditto, the CBS comedy show that used to run after Colbert. But I also want you to consider this calendar. July 1st, 2025, it is announced that Paramount agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit against CBS alleging unfair editing by CBS of a Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. It’s a lawsuit that few, if any respected legal experts thought had any merit. That’s July 1st. July 14th, Colbert says this.

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STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, “THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT”: Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s big fat bribe.

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TAPPER: July 17th, three days later, CBS announces that Colbert was canceled. One week after that, July 24th, the Federal Communications Commission approves the $8 billion Paramount-Skydance merger. Now, we should note in the midst of all that, on July 18th, Trump posted, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.” The Kimmel kerfuffle happened two months after that.

Now, you can make of the timing what you will, but it is inescapable that the decision by CBS Paramount to cancel Colbert pleased Trump. And the folks who owned CBS Paramount at the time got what they wanted, and they were handsomely compensated for it. Now, Trump never posted on Truth Social, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome comedian?” But anyone trying to curry favor with Trump surely knew where key pressure points were.

He had been attacking Colbert years before the show was canceled, and in subsequent posts, he took credit for it. Like the social media post I’m showing you right now. Now, you don’t have to like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel or anyone on that graphic to find this concerning. Because standards once eroded seldom return. We see that with the gerrymandering wars playing out.

The question, would a Democratic president in the future want to use this precedent? What pressure could be put on Spotify, for instance, when it comes to Joe Rogan? What pressure could be put on Fox when it comes to Fox News Channel? What happens if a Democratic president one day wonders, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome podcaster?”

T.S. Eliot wrote an acclaimed drama about King Henry II and Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. It’s called Murder in the Cathedral. The first professional American production of it in 1936, I think, was at the Manhattan Theater at 53rd and Broadway. That theater is now known as the Ed Sullivan Theater. It’s where Stephen Colbert’s show takes place until next Thursday. That meddlesome comedian has been rid.