Donald Trump has shared a bizarre AI video of him dumping a TV host he doesn’t like into a bin.

The US president, who has a massive nuclear arsenal at his fingertips, appeared to spend time posting a video showing him stepping up behind revered TV talk show host Stephen Colbert, picking him up and throwing him. The AI Trump could then be seen dancing to YMCA, the Village People song often played during his rallies.

There was no comment on the post, but it was also shared by the official White House account, which added the caption “bye-bye”. It marked the end of Colbert’s ‘The Late Show’, after US TV network CBS announced last summer that the show would be scrapped, citing economic reasons after 11 seasons.

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‘Bye-bye,’ said a White House post(Image: X/ @realDonaldTrump)

Unimpressed with the final episode, which aired last night on CBS, Trump called Colbert a “total jerk” who had “no talent, no ratings, no life”.

“Colbert is finally finished at CBS,” he said on Truth Social. “Amazing that he lasted so long. No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he’s finally gone!”

Colbert was the ratings leader in late-night TV, however, and many including the TV presenter, 62, have expressed scepticism that President Donald Trump’s repeated criticism of the show wasn’t a factor. Trump’s name on Thursday never came up.

Trump has made his irritation at late night hosts clear following repeated jibes by the comedians. He rejoiced over the cancellation in a Truth Social post, writing “I absolutely love” that the host “got fired”. He followed it with: “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

Just two months later, ABC, pressured by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair and affiliate networks, temporarily suspended Kimmel, the host of its own late-night show, following his remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

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Trump has made his dislike of Colbert clear(Image: X/ @realDonaldTrump)

In October last year, Colbert and fellow TV host Jimmy Kimmel appeared on each other’s shows, with Kimmel saying that they thought it would be a “fun way to drive the president nuts”.

In his opening monologue, he said: “My fellow late-night host, Stephen Colbert, is here with us. It’s the show the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) doesn’t want you to see.

“We’re doing something fun tonight. We’re doing something unprecedented tonight. I think it’s unprecedented. I did not bother to check.

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Colbert ended his 11 years hosting the show(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

“Tonight, Stephen is a guest on our show. I will simultaneously be a guest on his show. We thought it might be a fun way to drive the president nuts.”

In 2015 and during his first appearance on The Late Show, Colbert mocked Trump while gorging on Oreos, likening his inability to resist the cookies to his inability to resist going after the then-presidential candidate.

“Look, you don’t own me. I don’t need to play tape of you to have a successful TV show,” he warned an image of Trump. “Someone on television should have a modicum of dignity and it could be me.”

Over the next 11 years, Colbert couldn’t curb his appetite for making Trump barbs, often turning his show into a full-throated rebuke of MAGA policies. Trump would call him a “dead man walking.”

“The legacy of this show needs to be that we remember it as the show that was cancelled because a presidential administration wanted it off the air,” says Heather Hendershot, a professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University in the US.

“We haven’t connected every single dot on that, but it’s very clear that this was a political decision. And I think 20, 30, 40 years later, that is going to be strongly remembered about this show, that this was a moment of authoritarian triumph.”