Stephen Colbert during The Late Show on Monday, July 21.

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

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Scott Kowalchyk/CBS

It was the week that comedy hit back. Hard.

Here’s what I mean: When federal regulators on Thursday approved entertainment conglomerate Paramount’s $8-billion merger with Skydance, media analysts like me began to wonder.

The approval came about a week after Paramount-owned CBS announced that it was cancelling The Late Show, currently hosted by Stephen Colbert — a comic who hasn’t been shy in his criticism of President Trump and his administration. Many inquiring minds asked: Could moves to limit a prominent and vocal detractor of the president have helped the deal along?

But if anyone thought Colbert’s cancellation — which won’t come until his contract ends in May 2026 — might tamp down political commentary in other areas of Paramount’s media empire, they learned differently this past week.

Jon Stewart kicked things off last Monday while hosting The Daily Show, which airs on Paramount-owned Comedy Central. He offered a blistering monologue that questioned CBS’s statement asserting Colbert’s cancellation was “purely a financial decision,” eventually joining a gospel choir to sing “go f— yourself” to media companies, law firms, universities and other institutions that might censor themselves to avoid angering the government.

“The shows that you now seek to cancel, censor and control … a not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those shows,” Stewart noted, passionately. “That’s what made you that money.”