De Niro, Springsteen Hit Trump at Colbert’s Farewell

Stephen Colbert’s second-to-last Late Show was always going to be a party — but Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen made sure it had a little bite too.

Wednesday night’s episode brought out more than a dozen celebrity guests as part of a flipped version of Colbert’s signature “Colbert Questionert” segment, where the host usually grills his famous guests with a series of quirky questions. This time, Colbert took the guest sofa while his friends took turns asking him the questions. Billy Crystal, Mark Hamill, Martha Stewart, Josh Brolin, Jim Gaffigan, Jeff Daniels, Tiffany Haddish, Amy Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Aubrey Plaza, Weird Al Yankovic, James Taylor, John Dickerson, and Colbert’s wife Evie McGee Colbert all showed up. It was the kind of send-off that reminded you just how many people this show has touched over the years.

Then came De Niro.

The 82-year-old Oscar winner sat down and asked Colbert, “What number were you thinking of?” — a standard Questionert prompt. Colbert gave a characteristically long-winded answer, explaining that only two guests had ever correctly guessed the number three: Meryl Streep and Ethan Hawke. De Niro deadpanned, “OK” — then delivered the punchline.

“Because I thought it would have been two million point five, or two and a half million. That’s the number of Epstein files Trump still hasn’t released.”

Colbert threw his head back laughing. The audience erupted. The clip was everywhere by morning.

Springsteen Closes the Show — and Calls Out the Ellisons

If De Niro drew blood, Bruce Springsteen went for the jugular. The Boss closed the show with a performance of “Streets of Minneapolis,” his 2026 protest song — but not before saying his piece to the audience first.

“I am here tonight in support for Stephen because you’re the first guy in America who’s lost his show because we’ve got a president who can’t take a joke,” the 76-year-old told the crowd.

He didn’t stop there. “And because Larry and David Ellison feel they need to kiss his ass to get what they want,” Springsteen said, directly calling out Paramount CEO David Ellison and his father Larry by name. “Stephen, these are small-minded people… they got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about.”

CBS has maintained that canceling The Late Show — announced back in July 2025 — was purely a financial decision, citing the show’s reported $40 million annual loss. But Springsteen’s comments reflect what a lot of people in the industry have been saying quietly: that the politics were never far from the equation.

Trump, for his part, made no secret of his delight when the cancellation was announced. “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” he wrote on Truth Social at the time. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

The White House Responds

The administration didn’t let Wednesday night pass without comment. A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Thursday: “Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck with no talent and terrible ratings, which is exactly why CBS canceled his show and is booting him off the airwaves.”

It’s not the first time Trump has gone after Springsteen specifically. Back in April, he posted that the “Thunder Road” singer was “Bad, and very boring,” adding that he looks like a “dried up prune” with “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — and urging his supporters to boycott Springsteen’s concerts, which he called “overpriced” and said “suck.”

Online reactions split predictably. “This is an absolute mic drop right there for the Late Show, and god, it’s hard to believe that all of this will end tomorrow,” one person wrote in the YouTube comments on Springsteen’s performance. “Mad respect to the Boss, a much better man than the one sitting in the oval office,” added another. On the other side, X users called Springsteen a “washed up musician” and argued that Colbert lost his show because “nobody was watching, revenues were tanking, and he was simply un-funny.”

For Colbert, though, the noise may not be the point. In an interview with People published Tuesday, the 62-year-old host reflected on what he’s always hoped the show meant to viewers. “I hope they laughed. I hope they felt better at the end of the day,” he said. “We’re the last thing you see. A lot of things happen in a day, but we bat last, and so we get the last take that people hear before they go to bed, and I hope it made their day better.”

His final episode airs Thursday night on CBS. He’s promised the sendoff will be “something simple.”