Even though CNN staff are rallying to the defense of their former boss, Jeff Zucker evidently won’t be able to retire quietly.
The open secret that Zucker maintained an affair with Allison Gollust, the network’s married executive vice president and chief marketing officer, reportedly entered the official record thanks to the investigation into former host Chris Cuomo. The younger brother of former New York Gov. Andrew refused to go down without a fight. As CNN dug into his own misconduct, Cuomo took down Zucker with him.
Not only did Zucker personally lobby Andrew Cuomo to join Chris’s show at the start of the pandemic, but Zucker and Gollust both advised the Democrat on how to amplify and maximize conflict with then-President Donald Trump during his pandemic press conferences.
Wow, talk about a “feedback loop.”
The New York Post reports: “Meanwhile, CNN’s own investigation into Chris Cuomo also revealed that Zucker and Gollust had an inappropriately close friendship with Gov. Cuomo — even coaching him on what to say during his infamous COVID briefings.” An unnamed source also claimed that Zucker and Gollust, who once worked for the once-popular politician, “even advised Andrew what to say — how to respond and particularly how to hit back at [President Donald] Trump to make it more compelling TV.”
The affair alone created a complicated labyrinth of conflicts of interest. It allowed Zucker to promote Gollust over female subordinates who didn’t service him with sexual favors. It also created “kompromat” that allowed Zucker to be extorted by bad actors such as Chris Cuomo.
But for the head of an international news network to coach a high-profile partisan into escalating a feud with the sitting president during a pandemic, when Cuomo was roundly criticized for not working with Trump to secure lifesaving PPE and ventilators — wow! That goes far beyond a desecration of whatever journalistic ethics Zucker ever pretended to hold dear.
Zucker played politics for personal gain during a pandemic, violating what little remained of his professional integrity to promote a guy actively profiting off the pandemic.
While running NBC, Zucker single-handedly reincarnated Trump’s celebrity career. In 2016, he gave Trump a billion dollars in free media, and the rest is history.
But it’s far worse that he personally profited from heightening tensions between crucial leaders during a pandemic when they should have been working together. This is the rare revelation these days that is truly shocking.
