US President Donald Trump has once again been the subject of vitriol from Late Show host Stephen Colbert, amid a public and developing feud between the two.

Trump goaded the Late Show host when he heard the news that Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was cancelling the Late Show entirely after 33 years on air.

It was the latest spark in a political firestorm after Paramount paid a $16million (£12million) settlement to Trump over another flagship CBS show, 60 Minutes, featuring Kamala Harris, which Colbert previously described as a “big fat bribe”.

Despite the show being axed in May, Colbert is unlikely to let up on the jokes as he runs down the clock, continuing to double down on the President.

In a clip previewing Monday’s episode, Colbert mocks Trump’s recent statement about child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, made during a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer: “By the way, I never went to the island,” Trump said.

“I never had the privilege of going to his island.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Colbert quips in disbelief, before switching into a Trump impression: “Sadly, I never had the honour of dining with Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Trump’s full quote to Starmer pressed the fact that he had actually declined an invitation from Epstein.

“I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down.”

Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, but died 35 days before his trial.

Epstein allegedly used his private islands to traffic underage girls for sex, alongside British co-conspirator and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell appeared in Manhattan federal court in 2022, and was sentenced to 240 months in prison for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse underage girls with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of a decade.

Trump’s opponents, and his own supporters, are calling for him to release the Epstein files containing a trove of documents, including transcripts of interviews with victims and witnesses, and items confiscated from raids of his various properties.

Colbert continued to poke fun at the reason Trump said he cut ties with Epstein, whom he claimed he wouldn’t talk to after the disgraced American financier “did something that was inappropriate.”

He admitted the President had finally shown “some moral backbone, before the show cuts to Trump, noting that Epstein “stole people” who worked for him.

The Wall Street Journal recently alleged the President had written a “bawdy” letter to Epstein to celebrate his birthday in 2003.

Trump has filed a $10billion lawsuit against the publication, with lawyers claiming the papers’ magnate, Rupert Murdoch, had been informed before publication that the letters were fake.

The President has now asked a US court to order a swift deposition of Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp, in his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, citing the British Journalist’s age.

“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” Trump’s lawyers stated in their filing.

However, Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher, has stood by the WSJ’s reporting and said it’s prepared to defend itself against the lawsuit.

In the first show back after Colbert’s shock firing he told the President to go and “f**k himself”, and that “the gloves are off”, in retaliation to Trump posting to Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”

The axing came only days after Colbert lambasted Paramount for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, over the President’s claims that CBS News deceptively edited an interview with the then-presidential democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

Trump filed the lawsuit last October, claiming the interview had the intention to “tip the scales in favour of the Democratic Party”.

Paramount agreed to settle the suit, but the money would need to be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, not paid to him “directly or indirectly”.

“I mean, obviously, CBS saw my upper lip and boom, cancelled. Coincidence? Oh, I think not. This is worse than fascism. This is stachism,” he said in response to the settlement.

The Guardian reports that in an anonymous leak, CBS appeared to suggest The Late Show lost $40million to $50million last year.

“Where would Paramount have possibly spent the other $16million?” he joked in response to the alleged losses. “Oh yeah.”