Stephen Colbert stood before his studio audience last week and told them a story about censorship. The most powerful man in the country, he said, had reached into his network and killed an interview. The First Amendment was under assault. Democracy, presumably, was darkening.

It was a lie. And the person who said so most clearly wasn't a conservative media critic or a Republican operative. It was Jasmine Crockett, the Black Democrat congresswoman, whose stunt Colbert's stunt purposely shafted. 

The facts are not complicated. Colbert had booked James Talarico, one of three Democrats competing in the Texas Senate primary, for an interview on his show. CBS lawyers flagged the Federal Communications Commission's equal-time rule — a broadcast law requiring that when a candidate appears on a non-news entertainment program, rival candidates in the same race get equivalent airtime. The Texas primary is less than two weeks away. CBS offered Colbert options to satisfy the rule. He ignored them, pulled the TV broadcast, and told his audience the network had silenced him.

Colbert has about ninety days left on television. His final episode airs in May — CBS is retiring the Late Show franchise entirely when he walks out. The show was reportedly losing $40 million a year. Colbert's relationship with the network had already turned brittle: he called a Paramount settlement with Trump a "bigfatbribe" on air months before the end was announced. A man in that position, with that history, has every incentive to go out as a martyr rather than a canceled TV host. The stunt had a motive. It also had a script.

Talarico played his part on cue. He told supporters they had been "pressured by the most powerful man in the country to change their broadcast. And that should be alarming to all of us." CBS corrected the record almost immediately, releasing a statement that it had "presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled."

Nobody from the FCC called. Nobody from the Trump administration called. Colbert had a choice, made it, and blamed the president.

The Trump framing dissolves the moment you ask one question: Who benefits the most from the "Trump censoring Colbert" line? The equal-time rule didn't require giving airtime to a Republican. It required giving airtime to the other Democrats in the same primary — most prominently, Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Enforcing the rule would have handed her a prime television platform weeks before voters go to the polls. 

The simple fix was always right there. Invite Crockett. Colbert didn't.

Crockett said so herself: "They could go ahead and move forward with the interview of James Talarico. They just needed to offer me equal time. I did not get a request from Late Night to go on."

Read that again. The entire constitutional crisis Colbert manufactured — the grave monologue, the First Amendment alarm — collapses into a booking decision. He chose not to call her. Then he built a fundraising machine around the silence.

And it worked. The "canceled" interview ran on YouTube, where it pulled roughly six million views. That's nearly three times the audience Colbert draws on a given broadcast night. Talarico's campaign says he raised $2.5 million in the twenty-four hours after the "suppression." The interview wasn't silenced — it was promoted, with better distribution than the network slot would have provided, and a martyr narrative attached. As a campaign finance operation disguised as a civil liberties crisis, it was genuinely impressive. Democrats purposely set out to hit Jasmine Crockett as hard as possible with the bus.

Donald Trump didn't suppress CBS or Democrats. Stephen Colbert and James Talarico suppressed a black Democrat, in an attempt to swing a primary.

Colbert said the opposite, of course. He didn't say his network was scared. He said the president's hand was on the scale. Those aren't the same claim. One is a critique of corporate spinelessness that the facts might support. The other is an accusation of government censorship that the facts directly contradict. Colbert chose the bigger lie because it raised more money. He knew the difference.

Which makes what happened to Crockett worth examining carefully.

She is a prominent Black congresswoman running in a Democratic primary against a lesser-known state legislator. That lesser-known guy is the hand-picked option in this race; Crockett is not. The national Democratic donor network has been directing significant resources toward Talarico. Now one of the most visible liberal media figures in the country ran a coordinated promotional event for her opponent — and when handed the obvious path to fairness, didn't take it.

Consider the backdrop. In 2020, Joe Biden announced he would only consider Black women for his vice presidential pick. In 2022, when nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, the administration made her race and gender central to the public framing of the choice. The message from the party and its media allies was consistent and explicit: Black women's representation was a moral imperative.

That same ecosystem is now quietly working against a Black woman in a Texas Senate primary. The donor class wants Talarico. A late-night host gave him millions in free media and a viral moment. And when the rule of law pointed directly toward giving Crockett equal time, it was ignored. The party that built an identity around representation politics is making a different calculation when the representative in question isn't on the preferred list. 

There's a version of the Democratic Party's behavior here that's at least consistent: they've always made pragmatic decisions about which candidates to support and which to sideline. The problem isn't the pragmatism. It's the gap between the stated principle — that Black women's leadership is non-negotiable — and the operational reality: it's negotiable whenever the preferred candidate is someone else. 

Crockett didn't play the role Democrats demanded; she wants to win. That's inconvenient for Democrats, who are now using the press to manufacture ways to boost Talarico, while trying to stiff-arm Crockett from the finish line. Democrats have spent a lot of time calling things like voter ID suppression and racism.

What is it called when they try to block a black woman from winning?  The crowd claiming democracy dies in darkness is awfully quiet. 

The press is letting the narrative run because they're cowards and agree with the Democratic Party's decision. The truth is obvious: Colbert is lying. The second truth is also evident: The Democrat Party doesn't stand for black women in every role - they'll ditch them like a hot potato if they think winning matters more.

Do you know who should watch these events with interest? Kamala Harris. She's leading the early 2028 polls, but most Democrats view her just as inconvenient as Jasmine Crockett.