Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy bashed Stephen Colbert on Saturday, calling the late-night host “ungrateful” after Colbert’s show was axed by CBS in what the network claimed was a “financial decision.”
“For these people, including like Colbert, to be like, ‘This isn’t really right and we’re blindsided’ — buddy, you’re losing 40 million dollars a year,” Portnoy said in a video posted to X, citing one estimate of the show’s losses reported by Reuters.
The announcement of the cancellation came just weeks after the network said it would pay $16 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by President Trump, a decision that Colbert had previously called a “big fat bribe.” Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is currently seeking approval for a merger from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission.
Lawmakers on the left have speculated that CBS’s cancellation might have been politically motivated, an assertion at which Portnoy effectively rolled his eyes. Rather, he asserted, Colbert was losing money and had been “arrogant” in his criticism of CBS.
“Welcome to the real f*cking world,” the Barstool founder said in the video, which he called a “rant.”
“And then you have the arrogance to go hammer your own company? What do you think was going to happen?” he asked.
Colbert has historically been a fierce critic of the president and previously went after CBS and Paramount for settling Trump’s claim, which the host called a “nuisance lawsuit.”
Portnoy said that Colbert should not have criticized his network so strongly, especially if his show was losing money. The New York Times estimated that the show’s losses were in the tens of millions of dollars.
“I’d fire you in a f—king heartbeat. That’s not politics. That’s just being ungrateful,” Portnoy said. “This is called capitalism, in the real world. “
