“I don’t think it was money,” Letterman says on a video on Letterman YouTube channel hosted by Barbara Gaines, who was previously an exec producer on The Late Show with David Letterman.

The far-left politics of "The Late Show" have been facing scrutiny after CBS announced last week that it was pulling the plug on Colbert's program, which will officially wrap up in May 2026.

Letterman surmised that Colbert's firing was so the $8 billion merger would be approved by the Trump administration.

While ratings for Colbert's show have declined over the last decade, the program has consistently achieved the highest views of any show in the 11:35 p.m. hour, outdrawing ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," according to Nielsen.