In the cutthroat world of late-night television, being number one is supposed to be a shield. For Stephen Colbert, host of the top-rated “The Late Show,” it was a throne he had occupied for years. But last week, that shield was shattered with the stunning news that his show was being canceled, set to air its final episode in May 2026. Faced with ten months left on the air, a host might be expected to go quietly, to ride off into the sunset with a series of nostalgic clips. Instead, Colbert lit a match. Declaring that the network “made one mistake—they left me alive,” he has promised to spend his final months speaking “unvarnished truth to power.” His first target: a gleeful Donald Trump and a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal detailing a deeply disturbing birthday letter the former president once sent to his good friend, the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The cancellation itself sent shockwaves through the industry. How could the undisputed ratings king be sent packing? In a monologue crackling with satirical fire, Colbert addressed the news head-on. He jokingly blamed “cancel culture” and, more specifically, the new mustache he had debuted just two days before the announcement. “This is worse than fascism,” he deadpanned, “This is stashism.” While his network, CBS, issued a gracious statement praising the show, an anonymous leak to the press offered a colder reality: the show was reportedly losing between $40 million and $50 million a year. It’s a staggering figure that highlights the brutal economics of modern media, where massive ratings don’t always translate to profitability in an era of fractured audiences and digital pennies. Colbert, ever the showman, compared his show’s financial woes to the recently bankrupt Red Lobster, joking, “Damn it, I told them we should stop offering the audience unlimited shrimp.”

The news of his professional demise was met with predictable celebration from his long-time nemesis, Donald Trump, who posted online, “I absolutely love that Co Bear got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.” For years, Colbert has been one of Trump’s most relentless and effective critics, and the former president clearly savored the moment. But his victory lap was short-lived. Colbert used Trump’s jab as the perfect springboard to pivot from his own troubles to a much darker story, one that pulls back the curtain on Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in the most unsettling of ways.

The bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal, which Colbert gleefully dissected for his audience, centers on a letter Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003. According to the report, the letter was not a simple, friendly greeting. It was described as “sexually suggestive” and bizarre in its construction. The most shocking detail is a hand-drawn illustration of a naked woman, sketched in heavy marker, that framed the typewritten text. In a flourish of crude vanity, the future president’s signature—a squiggly “Donald”—was placed directly below the woman’s waist, unmistakably mimicking pubic hair. As Colbert wryly noted, this implies Trump has been symbolically signing every document, from business deals to presidential executive orders, with his own pubic hair.

As disturbing as the drawing is, the typewritten message it contained is arguably even stranger. It reads less like a birthday wish and more like a creepy, absurdist screenplay for two, a private dialogue hinting at a shared, dark understanding of the world. The exchange goes:

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.”
“Yes, there is.”
“But I won’t tell you what it is.”
“Nor will I, since I also know what it is.”
“We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.”
“Yes, we do. Come to think of it.”
“Enigmas never age. Have you noticed that?”
“As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.”
“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

The closing line—“may every day be another wonderful secret”—is particularly chilling. It transforms the letter from a bizarre artifact into a potential piece of evidence, a written acknowledgment of a private world built on secrets shared between two powerful and predatory men. The letter suggests a bond that goes far beyond golf outings and society parties, hinting at a commonality that neither man dared to speak of aloud, but which they were happy to put in writing.

Trump’s response to the story’s publication was swift and characteristically bizarre. “This is not me,” he claimed. “I never wrote a picture in my life.” It’s a defense so nonsensical it borders on self-parody. As Colbert immediately proved by showing other examples of Trump’s own sketches, he has, in fact, “wrote” many pictures. Furious, Trump is reportedly now suing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns The Wall Street Journal, for a staggering $10 billion.

But the letter does not exist in a vacuum. As Colbert reminded his audience, it is just one piece of a much larger and deeply troubling puzzle. He brought up reports from those who knew the two men during their heyday, claiming they “bonded over a common interest in hitting on and competing for attractive young women.” This wasn’t just a friendship; it was a partnership built on a shared, predatory hobby.

Even more disturbing was the story of a 1993 party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The event was billed as a “calendar girl competition” featuring a slate of young women. The number of guests invited to this party? One. Jeffrey Epstein. As Colbert perfectly articulated, an event with only one guest is not a party; it’s an “appointment.” The scene it paints is grotesque: one powerful man procuring young women for the exclusive entertainment of another.

With ten months left and the gloves officially off, Stephen Colbert has fired a warning shot. By masterfully weaving his own professional eulogy into a scathing indictment of his greatest foe, he has signaled that his final season will not be a victory lap, but a scorched-earth campaign. He has turned his cancellation into a license to speak freely, and he has begun by unearthing a “wonderful secret” that Donald Trump would prefer stay buried forever. The question now is, what other secrets will he expose before the final curtain falls?