Late night host Stephen Colbert has a sharp theory about why he and his fellow comedians might get under President Donald Trump’s skin so much.

Looking back at his time hosting CBS’s “The Late Show” in an interview with The New York Times ahead of his final curtain call next month, he said, “Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity.”

“Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature,” he went on. “And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them.”

“The number of newspeople who have said to me or Jon Stewart or any of the guys who do this, ‘God, I wish I could say what you say on air,’” the comic recalled. “And we can. I think that upsets them. I think it might be upsetting that we really do not live in their world of principalities and powers.”

Asked if the way late night hosts have turned into political targets made him regret mocking the president and his allies, Colbert explained, “I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican. I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who is only working for his own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns.”

“That’s not a partisan position,” he continued.

“I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just roughing the ref,” the comedian added. “And we don’t even want to be refs, but they perceive us as refs.”

“I reject the partisan description,” he said. “Partisan means you’re never, ever going to make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison of how fertile the fields are.”

During the interview, Colbert also weighed in on whether he thought CBS’s decision to cancel his show had anything to do with his criticism of Trump or comments he made about the network reaching a $16 million lawsuit settlement with the president around the same time it was seeking the Federal Communications Commission’s approval for a huge merger.

Saying he had no reason to think the network was lying when it said the show was being shuttered for financial reasons, he added how he totally understands why people would think the cancellation and its timing seemed “fishy.”

“It’s possible that two things can be true,” Colbert said, later noting that he has “zero desire to have a contentious relationship with my network.”

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