Colbert’s Timeslot Literally Sold & How The Republican Party Unified | 5.21.26

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary

Episode: Colbert’s Timeslot Literally Sold & How The Republican Party Unified
Date: May 21, 2026
Hosted by: Georgia Howe & John Bickley

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Episode Overview

This episode of Morning Wire analyzes significant changes in U.S. politics and culture as the 2026 primaries unfold. The main themes are the Democratic Party’s leftward shift and internal controversies, the evolving unity within the Republican Party under Donald Trump, dramatic developments in congressional redistricting, and the end of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show—with key implications for American media and late-night entertainment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Democratic Party’s Leftward Shift & Controversial Candidates

• Primary Wins by Far-Left Candidates

  • Democrats anticipated a ‘blue wave’ but recent primary outcomes show far-left, Democratic Socialist-backed candidates emerging, sparking concern about the electability of these candidates with moderates.
  • Example: In a Philadelphia congressional district, the AOC Democratic Socialist-endorsed candidate won the primary. Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Atlanta mayor, secured the Democratic nomination for Georgia’s governorship.

• Controversial Statements by Candidates

  • Texas House candidate Maureen Galindo made incendiary remarks about Zionists:

    • “If you are a Zionist, meaning that you believe that you are just entitled to land, I think that you’re a danger to humanity and belong in prison.” (Maureen Galindo, 01:16)

  • Republicans and pundits say Democrats are increasingly tolerating radical rhetoric in their primaries, illustrated by Maine Senate candidate Grant Platner, described as having a “Nazi tattoo” and still receiving support from figures like Elizabeth Warren.

• Electoral Predictions & Democratic Challenges

  • The party in the White House traditionally loses midterms, but this year is uncertain. Democrats have been losing key redistricting battles (e.g., in Virginia), and polling shows Americans still distrust them on issues like border security and the economy.

  • Quote: “Although some concern among Republicans about not being able to hold the House, Americans are still kind of in this PTSD situation where they remember what the Democrats did under Joe Biden and they do not trust them with major issues.” (Katie Pavlich, 06:40)

• Potential Impact: Some Democratic positions—like defunding ICE or releasing illegal immigrants from jail—may undermine trust with moderates.

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2. Unified Republican Party Under Trump

• Trump’s Dominance in Primaries

  • Trump-endorsed candidates won across the board, even toppling Republican establishment picks, such as the would-be successor to Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and several gubernatorial races.
    • Discussion: The Republican Party is remaking itself in Trump’s image, removing dissenters (e.g., Bill Cassidy).
    • Quote: “Trump has put his stamp on everything that is going on within the GOP. The truth is the Democratic Party has a bigger split than the Republican Party at this point, but they are unified simply by virtue of the fact that they loathe Donald Trump.” (Ben Dominance, 11:00)

• Redistricting Wins and Numbers Game

  • Recent Supreme Court decisions allowed new, more Republican-friendly districts to be drawn, reshaping the congressional map and posing real threats to the Democratic Black Congressional Caucus, who may lose up to 20 seats.

  • However, not all redistricting is a surefire win; some new districts are only narrowly Republican, which could backfire.

  • Quote: “I think that this is a map that is now much more beneficial to Republicans than it looked like it would be a year ago. Problem, though, of course, is that those things are always kind of unexpected.” (Ben Dominance, 12:11)

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3. End of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show and Cultural Shifts in Late-Night

• Colbert’s Exit from Late-Night TV

  • The final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert marks not just his show’s end, but potentially the entire late-night era that began with David Letterman.

  • Colbert’s program, like Jimmy Kimmel’s, became overtly political, focusing nightly on anti-Trump commentary.

    • Colbert’s on-air example:
      • “Mr. Trump, your presidency. I love your presidency. I call it disgrace the nation. You attract more skinheads than free Rogaine… the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.” (Stephen Colbert, quoted by Megan Basham, 14:46)
    • Result: While he beat competitors in ratings for a time, his audience fell 40% from its 2018 high; his show was losing $40–50 million annually.

  • CBS frames his departure as a financial decision, but Megan Basham argues partisan politics drove away half the potential audience, alongside generational shifts (viewers moving to YouTube, TikTok, etc.).

• Byron Allen’s Takeover and Non-Political Pivot

  • Media mogul Byron Allen will fill Colbert’s timeslot under a “time buy” arrangement—Allen pays CBS for the hour and supplies programming, slashing CBS’s financial risk.
  • Allen promises a non-political, broad-reaching comedy approach, aiming to “sell sneakers to Republicans too,” referencing Michael Jordan’s famed neutrality.
    • Quote: “I don’t care who you vote for. I don’t care. I’m here to make people laugh. You’re going to vote who you’re going to vote for. No matter what I say… not my business.” (Byron Allen, 17:23)
  • Industry impact: If late-night goes back to entertainment-first, other networks may follow Allen’s model.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Zionism and Far-Left Rhetoric:
  • “If you are a Zionist...I think you’re a danger to humanity and belong in prison.”
    (Maureen Galindo, 01:16)
• On Trump’s Hold Over GOP:
  • “After this cycle, Trump and his political team are far more effective than they were during his first presidency at getting rid of the people who they just don’t like or view as insufficient loyal to him.”
    (Ben Dominance, 09:32)
• On The Culture of Late Night:
  • “I want to sell sneakers to Republicans too.”
    (Byron Allen, paraphrasing Michael Jordan, 17:23)
  • “All of late night...is facing audience erosion. Alienating half of the potential audience was never a good long-term approach.”
    (Megan Basham, 15:37)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Democratic Primary Controversies & Far-Left Candidates: 03:29–08:14
• Republican Primaries, Trump’s Influence, and Redistricting: 09:01–13:25
• Colbert’s Exit, Media Trends, and Byron Allen’s New Show: 13:31–17:54

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Episode Conclusion

The 5.21.26 episode of Morning Wire underscores pivotal shifts in American politics and culture: a Democratic Party moving left and courting controversy, a Republican Party consolidating power under Trump, and seismic changes in media, with late-night TV veering back from political punditry to broad-based entertainment. The consequences of these shifts—at the ballot box and on screen—will be crucial to watch in the months ahead.

Transcript

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[Georgia Howe]

Democrats are expecting a blue wave in November, but their new slate of far left primary winners will test the party's strength with moderate voters.

[Maureen Galindo]

If you are a Zionist, meaning that you believe that you are just entitled to land, I think that you're a danger to humanity and belong in prison.

[Georgia Howe]

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. It's Thursday, May 21st, and this is Morning Wire.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Despite some high profile schisms, Republican voters continue to consolidate behind Trump.

[Political Analyst]

Looking at the results from tonight, I think it's clear to me, and it cleared a lot of people in the political world, that President Trump still holds an enormous amount of influence and sway in these Republican parties.

[Georgia Howe]

And it's the end of an era.

[Caller or Commentator]

Do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis. That's an unfair comparison. The Nazis were willing to show their faces.

[Georgia Howe]

The Hyper Political Late show with Stephen Colbert comes to an end and its replacement could signal a big cultural shift.

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[Georgia Howe]

Democrats came into the year heavily favored to win the House, but some controversial left wing candidates have Republicans hoping they still have a shot in November.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Joining us now is Katie Pavlich, host of KATIE PAVLICH Tonight. Katie, great to have you back on.

[Katie Pavlich]

Great to be back. Thanks so much for having me.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

So we've had another round of primary elections this week and more are on the horizon every week. We're starting to see each party really starting to shape up here. Who are some of the key players on the Democratic side heading into November that we now know will be important to watch.

[Katie Pavlich]

What I think is interesting is you're seeing the shift of the far left of the party now taking over. There was a race in a congressional district in Philadelphia and the candidate that is the AOC Democratic Socialist endorsed candidate is the one who came out on top in that race. While Republicans are the ones who are not going so far to the right. They're going more towards a regular Make America Great Again posture with the president being still in charge of the Republican Party. We saw Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is the former mayor of Atlanta, become the candidate in the primary for governor in that state, which I think will be a formative position for her. I think Republicans will have a tough time taking her on. She does have the infrastructure in Georgia to do that. But more broadly across the country, you're definitely seeing Democrats still shift to the left, whereas President Trump and his candidates were victorious. He had no losses in terms of the primary candidates that he endorsed.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

I wanted to specifically ask you about

[Shopify Representative]

a highly controversial House candidate in Texas. That's all over the interwebs right now, Maureen Galindo. She said some seriously Jaw dropping things. Democrats claim this is a Republican op. What in the world is going on there?

[Katie Pavlich]

Well, Democrats are accusing, as you said, Republicans of pushing this candidate to try and, you know, win this race in Texas. But she posted a post on the Internet saying that she was going to imprison American Zionists should she be elected. She's gonna put legisl legislation on the table to do that. Basically put American Jews and Americans who support the state of Israel's right to exist in to prison camps. One thing, one big takeaway from the primaries is that Democratic primaries went the way of continuing this kind of hatred and rhetoric, whereas Republicans primaries went away from that. Thomas Massie hasn't said that he wants to put American Zionists in camps, but he certainly during his concession speech said that he couldn't call his opponent, Mr. Gelrein because he couldn't find his number in Tel Aviv. So Republican Party is moving away from that kind of conspiracy and rhetoric, whereas the Democratic Party is embracing it. You did see some condemnation of her statements, but generally they've been tolerating this. And then of course, in Maine, their Senate candidate, Grant Platner, who has a Nazi tattoo, that is someone who they are fully getting behind. And big hitters like Elizabeth Warren continue to stand by.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Big picture Democrats are expected to win pretty big come November. Yeah, that's what you usually see in these off elections. So what do you expect to see? Do we still see a Democratic wave or do you think it's maybe smaller than people projected earlier in the year?

[Katie Pavlich]

Yeah, you know, history shows that the, the party in the White House gets taken out in the midterms. President Obama talked about that when he lost the 2010 midterms. He said he got shellacked. But I actually think that could be different this time. Democrats thought that they could win this redistricting war to get a few more seats ahead of the midterms. They are losing fight after fight on that, the most recent one coming in Virginia. And also when you look at the polling, although some concern among Republicans about not being able to hold the House, Americans are still kind of in this PTSD situation where they remember what the Democrats did under Joe Biden and they do not trust them with major issues like border security in the economy, especially when they're still campaigning on things like eliminating ice, not funding border patrol, allowing criminals to run free, and especially if you're an illegal alien here, allowing you out of jail specifically because you deserve to be out. So I actually don't think that it's a guarantee that Democrats are going to with the midterms. History would say they will. But there's a lot of strategy going on at the White House. James Blair, who's the former deputy chief of staff, of course, is leaving the White House to run the president's political operation. He's been very successful so far. Again, the primaries were a good example of that. So the president's political team knows what they're doing and they're very, very strategic and they have wins on the board already. There's still a lot of work to do for Republicans, but it's not a guarantee that Democrats will win.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

And no, it's not. Still some time left to make some major moves.

[Katie Pavlich]

Indeed. Eternity.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Thank you so much for joining us, Katie.

[Katie Pavlich]

Thanks for having me. Good to see you.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

You too.

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[Georgia Howe]

Today, with primary season underway, a surprisingly united Republican Party is emerging. The party is hoping that unity and recent redistricting wins will be enough to buck the overwhelming odds in favor of Democrats.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Joining us now is Daily Wire opinion editor and host of the Big Ben show, Ben Dominance. Great to have you back on.

[Ben Dominance]

Great to be with you as always.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

So a big week for Republicans in a lot of different ways. We had these primaries and let's start there. What is the state of play for Republicans at this point?

[Ben Dominance]

Republicans headed into the midterms obviously face significant headwinds, but there were all of these statewide wins for Donald Trump and his political team. They had chosen various candidates, you know, across the country, including in Georgia, including in Kentucky, who were at odds with what you might consider to be the establishment Republican or the legacy Republican Party in terms of their perspective, loyalists to Donald Trump. And they all prevailed when it came to winning and coming in first place, you know, in the case of, of Kentucky, you, the handpicked person who was supposed to inherit the job from Mitch McConnell, go down in having the opposition of someone who Donald Trump had backed. And then in Georgia, you saw the governor's race there play out in similar fashion, where you had establishment party backing various people who didn't even make it to the runoff. Now, what does this all say? It says that after this cycle, Trump and his political team are far more effective than they were during his first presidency at getting rid of the people who they just don't like or view as insufficient loyal to him. And that, to me, is reshaping this Republican Party into one that truly looks like a referendum on Trump one way or the other. When it comes to the midterms, for some Republicans, that might be a defect, but from the White House's perspective, it's exactly what they want.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

I would think Republicans would be very excited about having a unified front here. Right?

[Ben Dominance]

They're definitely excited about that. And the truth is that if you look at the two different parties, the Republican Party is actually far more unified now, having gotten rid of people who were thorns in the president's side, like Bill Cassidy, the incumbent in Louisiana. With this type of remaking of the Republican Party, Trump has put his stamp on everything that is going on within the gop. The truth is the Democratic Party has a bigger split than the Republican Party at this point, but they are unified simply by virtue of the fact that they loathe Donald Trump.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Yeah, we just talked to Katie Pavlich about that, and she really lays out the case. These controversial candidates really could weigh the Democrats down in ways that might surprise people. Obviously, Republicans, like you said, look, they've got a lot of headwinds coming into a midterm, so it's going to be a. A major lift for them to not lose the numbers game. But speaking of the numbers game, the Black Congressional Caucus, which is all Democrats, have said they might lose as many

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as 20 different seats from their caucus alone.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

This is all about this redistricting effort. How much do we think this redistricting effort from the Republicans after the Supreme Court ruling is going to really change the game in November?

[Ben Dominance]

I think you've changed the map, and you've done so in a way that was both unexpected, given the Supreme Court's decision, and one that is pretty revolutionary. Democrats have counted on these districts for a very long time, and that sort of thing is now, you know, being swept away, and it's giving the states an opportunity to go in and to redistrict according to their own priorities. And for a lot of red states, that means, you know, having districts that are more representative of the state as a whole. I think that this is a map that is now much more beneficial to Republicans than it looked like it would be a year ago. Problem, though, of course, is that those things are always kind of unexpected. In Texas, for instance, you know, President Trump just endorsed Ken Paxton, the controversial attorney general there who's taking on Senator John Cornyn in the runoff. Paxton will probably win that runoff, but if he does, there's a lot of concerns among Texas politicos that some of the new districts they've carved out have a little bit too much margin of error in terms of Democrats being able to hold on to them, given that they were drawn as Republican districts, but only by a couple of points. And that's something that I think is of concern because you don't exactly have the ability to predict how these new districts will go in every case.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

You never really know. Ben, thank you so much for joining us.

[Ben Dominance]

Great to be with you.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Stephen. Colbert's Late show will air its final episode on CBS tonight after 11 seasons. Media mogul Byron Allen is taking over Colbert's slot and he says his show will take a very different approach to politics.

[Georgia Howe]

Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham is here now with more. So, Megan, Colbert leaving late night feels like a major cultural shift. And he also made it clear this wasn't his choice to leave. What happened?

[Megan Basham]

Yeah, well, you know, one thing I'd point out, Georgia, is that this is actually bigger than Colbert because this isn't just the last episode of his show. It's also the last episode of the Late show, which started under David Letterman and has run for 33 years. So this really does feel like the end of an era. And I think there's a couple of factors that we really need to look at here. And of course, the big one is politics. So like Jimmy Kimmel, Colbert's show evolved into something I would say much closer to nightly political commentary than to the traditional kind of late night entertainment that we expected from people like Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. So starting under the first Trump administration, left wing and anti Trump monologues kind of became Colbert's stock in trade. And just a couple of examples I could give you from what you would expect on an ordinary night of his show.

[Caller or Commentator]

Mr. Trump, your presidency. I love your presidency. I call it disgrace the nation. You attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more People marching against you than cancer. You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head. In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.

[Megan Basham]

Now, that approach did work in terms of beating his competitors. Colbert frequently led the ratings among the late night broadcast hosts, but overall viewership has really been drying up over the last few years. His audience had shrunk by about 40% from his high in 2018. And then his show has also been losing an estimated 40 to 50 million dollars a year. So maybe not surprising that CBS made this decision.

[Georgia Howe]

Now, has CBS indicated that the partisan politics were part of the viewership problem? No.

[Megan Basham]

You know, they're very much trying to frame this as purely a financial decision, but I think it's really impossible to separate the politics from the economics here. Networks have been looking at declining ad revenue and shrinking audiences as so many younger viewers have migrated over to places like YouTube and TikTok and all of those streaming services. So all of late night, including Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, all of them have been facing that same kind of audience erosion. But these shows are also very expensive to produce. And I think that's why alienating half of the potential audience was never a good long term approach. And other late night hosts are making it clear that they also think that this was about politics. And then you also have the fact that Colbert is being replaced by a comedian who is explicitly saying he's not going to get political. So it's really hard to miss that messaging.

[Georgia Howe]

So let's talk about Byron Allen. Who is he and what does he say his plans are for that time slot?

[Megan Basham]

Byron Allen is a really interesting figure, and his new deal with CBS is a pretty intriguing model. So he started out as a comedian, but he built a roughly $5 billion media empire by buying up undervalued properties. So what CBS is doing here is essentially leasing the hour to Alan through what's called a time by arrangement. So Allen's company will pay for the slot and he then supplies the programming. And that dramatically lowers CBS's costs and risk. But Allen's messaging has been that he's going to be a corrective to what late night has become. He's repeatedly said that he wants viewers to laugh. Laugh rather than feel lectured. And in an interview with cnn, he agreed that he wants to employ that old Michael Jordan model of saying, hey, I want to sell sneakers to Republicans too.

[Byron Allen]

I don't care who you vote for. I don't care. I'm here to make people laugh. You're going to vote who you're going to vote for. No matter what I say doesn't matter. It's not my business. Not my business.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

Do what you do.

[Byron Allen]

So I'm here to make you laugh.

[Megan Basham]

So long story short here, Alan is an extremely savvy businessman and he thinks there's still money to be made in late night if it's not political.

[Georgia Howe]

Well, if audiences respond well to non political content, I have to imagine other networks are going to take notice.

[Megan Basham]

Yeah.

[Georgia Howe]

So, Meghan, thanks for reporting.

[Megan Basham]

Yep, my pleasure.

[Georgia Howe]

Thanks for waking up with us. The reporting that fuels this show is only possible because you tune in every day and because of our Daily Wire subscribers.

[Host (Morning Wire)]

To enjoy the show ad free and join our mission, become a [e-mail] we'll be back this evening with more news. You need to know.

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