President Donald Trump's Federal Communications Commission began its long-threatened crackdown on political late-night talk show interviews by pressuring CBS to pull an already-filmed interview on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" with Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico.
But that move appears to have blown up in their faces — and some political observers are saying this could be a "boon" for Talarico's campaign.
Colbert responded to the legal threats by instead uploading the interview to "The Late Show" YouTube page, where it has since spread to every corner of the internet and likely earned far more viewership than it would have airing on CBS in the first place — an excellent development for Talarico, who has trailed most primary polls in recent weeks against Dallas-area Rep. Jasmine Crockett, partly due to his lesser name recognition among Texas voters.
Talarico posted the interview to X, saying, "This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas."
Commentators noticed.
"James Talarico is having quite a moment in Texas after the Colbert interview — and according to Google Trends, Texans are now searching his name at a very high rate just in time for early voting," said election forecaster Logan Phillips in a post on X.
"As of 12 PM ET, view counts on the most-watched Colbert clips on his FCC-censored Talarico interview: YouTube: 1.3M; Instagram: 1.6M; TikTok: 2.4M; Twitter: 5.1M," wrote energy policy analyst Jessy Han. "For context, Colbert's show averages 2.3 million viewers on linear TV."
"This incredible stat says a lot about why this @colbertlateshow interview w/@jamestalarico was such a boon for him," wrote former Barack Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod. "He gets the benefit of being banned from the airwaves by CBS under fire from Trump's FCC — a badge of honor among Dem primary voters — and the interview already has been seen by more viewers digitally than it would have been had it simply aired."
Longtime Bernie Sanders strategist and Hispanic voter outreach expert Chuck Rocha agreed, simply writing, "CONFIRMED."