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Carr Tells C-SPAN's Washington Today There Was 'No Censorship at All' in the Colbert Interview Fight

February 18, 2026 · C-SPAN · 0:59:14

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

C-SPAN’s Washington Today program for February 18, 2026 led with an interview with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about late-night host Stephen Colbert’s claim that CBS had blocked him from interviewing Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico. According to C-SPAN’s description of the program, Carr said journalists were tricked into covering Colbert’s claim and that there was “no censorship at all.”

The same edition of the program covered the start of early voting in Texas and the state’s Senate primaries, Les Wexner’s testimony to Congress about Jeffrey Epstein, the fifth day of the Homeland Security Department shutdown, President Trump’s Black History Month reception at the White House, Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s dispute with the President over the Potomac River sewage spill, and a U.N. Security Council meeting on Middle East peace efforts, according to C-SPAN’s program description. This page embeds the full program; Carr’s interview is its lead segment.

Why it matters

The Colbert fight was the sharpest test yet of Carr’s posture toward broadcast licensees: the chairman’s position, stated here on the unedited C-SPAN record, is that the equal-time dispute was a manufactured story rather than an FCC intervention. Carr’s broadcast-regulation record — the Build America agenda, the December 2025 and January 2026 oversight hearings, and this interview — is the core of his tracked file on this chronicle.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: Carr’s on-record claim of “no censorship at all” in the Colbert/Talarico matter, as stated to C-SPAN on February 18, 2026, against Colbert’s claim that the interview was blocked — both claims attributed, to be checked against the FCC’s subsequent handling of broadcast equal-time questions.

Sources: C-SPAN, “Washington Today (2-18-26),” February 18, 2026 (official C-SPAN upload, embedded above). Characterizations as stated by Chairman Carr and by C-SPAN’s program description.