Stephen Colbert recently flashed the middle finger at Slate's Political Gabfest on December 18, 2025. He did so after hugging news anchor John Dickerson on the last day of his job, seemingly aiming it at CBS, Dickerson's former employer and Colbert's current employer.Dickerson, who was the co-anchor for CBS Evening News, has stepped down from the position. He made the announcement back on October 27, 2025, stating:"Local news: At the end of this year, I will leave CBS, sixteen years after I sat in as Face the Nation anchor for the first time. I am extremely grateful for all that CBS gave me — the work, the audience’s attention and the honor of being a part of the network’s history — and I am grateful for my dear colleagues who’ve made me a better journalist and a better human. I will miss you."While officially there has been no reason provided for Dickerson's departure from the network, both his departure and the cancellation of The Late Show that Stephen Colbert hosts come after they were critical of a $16 million USD settlement by Paramount, the parent company of CBS, to President Donald Trump, a report by People points out.Dickerson stated at the time in his criticism of the settlement between Paramount and Trump:"We pride ourselves on our BS detector, so it ought to work on ourselves, too. When it doesn’t, the stakes are real, a loss of public trust, the spread of misinformation. The Paramount settlement poses a new obstacle. Can you hold power to account after paying it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?"Stephen Colbert has been critical of the Trump-Paramount settlementStephen Colbert was also critical of the settlement between Donald Trump and Paramount, stating in an interview with GQ Magazine:"It is self-evident that that is damaging to the reputation of the network, the corporation and the news division. So it is unclear to me why anyone would do that other than to curry favor with a single individual."Colbert continued:"If people have theories that associate me with that, it’s a reasonable thing to think, because CBS or the corporation clearly did it once. But my side of the street is clean and I have no interest in picking up a broom or adding to refuse on the other side of the street. Not my problem."Rolling Stone @RollingStoneLINKStephen Colbert aired an animated clip titled “Colbert’s Canceled Christmas: The Last Noel,” taking aim at Donald Trump’s desire to ruin everything good.Colbert has also been critical of the Republican president on several other occasions. He recently criticised Trump's handling of the Epstein Files case, as well as pointing out the blooming price hike of the president's ballroom project. The show host has in the past accused Trump of looking for a scapegoat.For context, Trump has been repeatedly linked to Epstein, with a decades-long association with the late convicted criminal. Trump and Epstein frequently visited each other, and Trump has traveled on Epstein's private aircraft multiple times.After the cancellation of his show by CBS, Stephen Colbert promised not to stop his criticism of Trump, stating that Paramount had canceled the show but made the mistake of keeping him alive. Stephen Colbert's The Late Show will end in May 2026. Colbert took over the show from David Letterman in 2015. The show was first hosted back in 1993.