A rumor that circulated online in late July 2025 claimed a video showed comedian Stephen Colbert, host of CBS' recently canceled "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," hinting at a U.S. Senate run in his home state of South Carolina.
This claim circulated in a July 21 YouTube video (archived) receiving nearly 1.7 million views. The clip displayed a TikTok-created, thumbnail-image caption reading, "Stephen Colbert's 3 secret plans will turn CBS into a joke." The text caption also similarly said, "Stephen Colbert's three secret plans are sure to turn those who fired him into a joke."
In the clip, Colbert allegedly addresses his show's cancellation, says he found inspiration in former late-night TV host Conan O'Brien's career moves, and hints at running for Congress. He purportedly says of O'Brien, "I think I might ask him for advice. Actually, I have an option that will absolutely surprise everyone. I'm from South Carolina and the state will have an open Senate seat next year. Who knows? Maybe I'll give it a try."
Users also shared this rumor on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived). One TikTok user's clip (archived) — the same video appearing on YouTube, also on July 21 — received nearly 700,000 views, as of this writing.
However, Colbert did not make the remarks depicted in the video. With the use of an artificial-intelligence tool, a user manipulated his lip movements with what the tech world commonly refers to as deepfake visuals, as well as altered his vocals.
The first three seconds of the video, showing Colbert seated in front of a wall, originated from the opening monologue of his April 2, 2020, episode. At the time, he, other late-night TV hosts and much of the rest of the world were isolating at home in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The person creating the inauthentic clip possibly used the audio from that episode as the basis for telling an AI tool to generate words with his voice — words he never actually said.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets confirming Colbert recently hinted at a Senate run, as of July 30. Had he posed the possibility of a run for office in a public video announcement, outlets worldwide would have covered the news, just like they did in 2012 when he ran for Senate in South Carolina as his former famous satirical character depicted on the Comedy Central TV show "The Colbert Report."
Search results from the aforementioned search-engine websites primarily displayed links to articles about Colbert's career options moving forward, as well as petitions urging him to run for an open seat in the state in 2026. It's possible those articles and petitions inspired the creation of the inauthentic clip, as Snopes has previously reported on other made-up stories at least partially based on real-world events.
We contacted a Paramount Global representative for Colbert's show to ask about this rumor, as well as the aforementioned TikTok user to inquire if they created the video, and will update this article if we receive more information.
'Late Show' ending in May 2026
Colbert announced the cancellation of not just his iteration of "The Late Show," but "The Late Show" as a whole, on his July 17 episode. He told his audience, "I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away."
In a July 18 news release, CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, said the show would end in May 2026. The statement read, in part, "This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount."
The Associated Press reported the timing of the show's cancellation led U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to publicly question the motives. The announced ending of the program occurred three days after Colbert criticized a settlement between President Donald Trump and Paramount Global, including joking if CBS and Paramount fired him, "Mr. Stephen always has his scented oil business to fall back on." The settlement concerned a "60 Minutes" interview from 2024 with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, in which CBS News aired two different answers to the same question.
For further reading, Snopes previously reported the facts about a rumor claiming "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" was losing at least $40 million per year.