Nah, reality is even simpler than your conspiracy. These late night guys are money losers and they are looking for a reason to drop them. The fact that they nightly insult 80 million potential viewers with their arrogant and unneeded leftist opinions is bad for business. It doesn’t matter how Jimmy and his leftist writer feel, that’s their business they should keep out of the job. They need to maximize shareholder value by putting on the best show possible.

It’s not about “Jimmy”, it’s about his audience.

then what you do, is just not re-up the contract or buy it out. That could have been done at any time.

If that were true they’d just shelve the show. It’s entirely within their power to do so and always has been. They don’t need an excuse.

Out of the two, “company wants to win favor with Trump for a merger” is actually the simpler theory.