Bruce Springsteen calls out Trump on penultimate Late Show: "we got a President who can't take a joke"

Wednesday's penultimate episode featured Bruce Springsteen performing 'Streets of Minneapolis', the anti-ICE protest song he wrote in reaction to the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

"I am here in support tonight for Stephen, because you are the first guy in America who lost his show because we got a President who can't take a joke", Springsteen said before his performance.

"And because Larry and David Ellison (owners of CBS parent company Paramount) feel they need to kiss his ass to get what they want. Stephen, these are small-minded people. They got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about".

The Late Late Show, hosted by Stephen Colbert since 2015, was cancelled by CBS last July, three days after Colbert slammed the network for settling a lawsuit with the US President.

The lawsuit against CBS alleged that the network deceptively edited an interview with former US Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on its 60 Minutes news programme, in an effort to tip the scales in favour of the Democratic Party in the election. Paramount agreed to make the payment of $16 million to settle the lawsuit.

"I absolutely love that Colbert got fired", Trump posted on Truth Social after learning of the cancellation.

"His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. He has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show".

Production of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was suspended from September 17 to September 22 last year by ABC (American Broadcasting Company).

The suspension came following criticism from conservatives and public pressure from the Trump administration, over Kimmel's monologue commentary about President Trump and his supporters' reaction to the assassination of conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder, Charlie Kirk.

While Colbert has refrained from directly criticising Trump and the Ellisons, his guests have done the talking for him in the final weeks of the show.

His predecessor, David Letterman, threw furniture off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theatre onto the CBS logo.

"You can take a man's show," said Letterman, "You can't take a man's voice".

Robert DeNiro swapped seats with Colbert for the "Colbert Questionert" segment of the show.

When asked what number he was thinking of, Colbert replied, "three".

"Okay", said DeNiro. "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".

The Late Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end its run tomorrow night.