The Jeff Zucker Scandal: Inside CNN’s President’s Downfall

After a phone call with the New York Governor, President Trump addressed a crowd of journalists outside his White House. Andrew Cuomo. “There’s a possibility that sometime today, we’ll do a quarantine — short-term, two weeks — of New York, probably New Jersey, and certain parts of Connecticut,”He said it while clutching his umbrella. “This would be an enforceable quarantine. You know, I’d rather not do it, but we may need it.”

Hours later, Cuomo was asked during his daily press conference about Trump’s comments. “From a medical point of view, I don’t know what you’d be accomplishing,”He smiled and nodded.

The governor, however, appeared on CNN with an even more forceful assessment. He predicted that a quarantine would be imposed as the sunset approached. “chaos and mayhem”in the tristate area and weighing in on the economic implications of such an move. “I think it would paralyze the economy,”He said. “I think it would shock the economic markets in a way we’ve never seen before.”

CNN anchor Ana Cabrera asked a tailor-made question. “What would this mean for the stock market? Would it have to shut down?”

“Oh, it would drop like a stone,” Cuomo insisted. “That would drop this economy in a way that wouldn’t recover for months, if not years.”

What viewers did not know is that in the hours between Cuomo’s Albany press conference and his CNN dinner-hour appearance, he corresponded directly with CNN leadership. Firing off a text to the network’s top marketing and communications executive, Allison Gollust — who had also been his own publicist a few years prior — Cuomo wrote, in an apparent reference to CNN President Jeff Zucker, “Ask Jeff to call me plz.” Zucker’s representatives say he has “no record”Cuomo to speak with that day. Regardless, Cuomo landed on a talking point sure to grab Trump’s attention. Given their long-standing and lucrative relationship via reality TV, Zucker knew just which levers to pull for Trump. The Apprentice.

About 30 minutes before Cuomo appeared on CNN by remote feed, Gollust emailed a programing staffer, cc’ing Zucker, and offered the governor as a last-minute guest to talk about Trump’s proposed quarantine. After that, she informed Zucker that the governor would be happy to have a conversation with him. Cuomo was then notified by Gollust after the segment had ended. “Well done . . . Cuomo-W. Trump-L.”

A representative of the former governor declined comment. Risa Heller is a spokesperson for Zucker and Gollust. She stated in a statement: “Jeff never advised Andrew Cuomo,”und that Gollust was an idea “laundering advice to the Governor”Was “far-fetched”And “patently ridiculous.”However, two sources familiar in the matter dispute this. To observers both outside and inside CNN, the network brass’s interactions with the governor represented the worst kind of journalistic lapse — “one of the most clear-cut ethical breaches you could think of,”Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri journalism professor. News outlets are not supposed to serve as their publicists, but expose the wrongdoings and mischiefs of politicians. That’s especially true for the network that bills itself as “The Most Trusted Name in News.”

CNN fired ZuckerOn February 2, 2022, Gollust reported a previously unknown affair. The relationship was discovered during an internal investigation of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo who was fired last year for helping his brother with sexual-misconduct claims. But, as was revealed days later in a statement by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, that probe turned up not only Zucker and Gollust’s affair, but also violations of journalistic best practices around the couple’s cozy relationship with the governor. The initial suggestion was that these failings were recent — lapses that took place during the extraordinary times of the pandemic. However, dozens of ex-colleagues who spoke with me said that they were not. Rolling Stone, they marked the culmination of Zucker’s three-plus decades spent in a craven pursuit of ratings and power, a career that would foster a toxic culture at two networks and fan the flames of the disinformation age along the way.

Zucker, at NBC, placed Trump before millions of American eyes for 14 seasons. He made him a lovably irascible titan in business and effectively turned around the television network. The ApprenticeIn a shadow campaign for Trump, the future leader of the Free World. This union was formed in 2003 by Trump, a semi-failed businessman who was looking to improve his image. Zucker, at the time president of NBC Entertainment was eager to agree. He invited Trump to be a regular guest on the show in order to cross-promote it. Today, where he was exalted like a Nobel laureate before an audience of America’s stay-at-home moms. And, of course, Zucker presided over Matt Lauer’s heyday, when the TodayAnchor preyed on young staffers who were vulnerable, almost without fear.

“Jeff and Trump are essentially the same person — the ability to self-promote and be wildly duplicitous. They are very similar. And vindictive. They’re not gonna forget anything.”

Zucker was both kingmaker, and king when he arrived at CNN. He hired on-air talent such as Clarissa Ward, and more recently Chris Wallace. He also launched landmark docuseries, like Anthony Bourdain – Parts UnknownThe ; turned a sluggish digital news operation into an efficient scoop machine. Chris Cuomo became a $6 million-per-year star, and he has been accused of both sexual misconduct and journalistic mistakes. Cuomo has denied the harassment and sexual-assault allegations and claims that Zucker and Gollust sanctioned any ethical violations. Zucker bucked conflict-of-interest protocol to have Chris interview his brother, shamelessly capitalizing on Andrew’s rising national profile during the pandemic. All the while, sources say, Zucker was conducting his affair with his subordinate, Gollust, in plain sight, bringing her from one network to the other, promoting her — and approving her compensation — at every stage of his ascension. She was a key player in Cuomogate, providing talking points to the governor — for whom she worked briefly between stints with Zucker — and relaying his preferred topics to CNN producers, including on that day in March 2020. Sources say it was all part of a pattern Zucker had nurtured for many years.

“Jeff will do anything for good ratings and buzz, journalistic ethics be damned,”One former NBC comrade says so. “He’s like, ‘Everybody’s talking about it. It’s great TV.’ But great TV doesn’t always translate to great journalism.”

Tom Touchet, who succeeded Zucker as executive producer of Zucker, was TodayFrom 2002 to 2005, frequently collided with Zucker or Trump in the early years of The ApprenticeNBC. More pointed is his assessment of Zucker: “Jeff and Trump are essentially the same person — the ability to self-promote and be wildly duplicitous They are very similar. And vindictive. They’re not gonna forget anything.”

Zucker and Gollust’s March 28 communicationsGov. Cuomo may be among the 100,000 texts and emails swept up in CNN’s investigation into Chris Cuomo’s journalistic processes, conducted by the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. When the probe wrapped on Feb. 13, Kilar’s statement called it “comprehensive and definitive,”Noting that the investigators had “found violations of Company policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, and Chris Cuomo.”

Plot twists abound, even though Zucker maintained that his resignation was the result of the open affair. First of all, the two parties claimed their romance had just recently blossomed. (“Jeff and Allison have had a professional partnership for over 22 years. It evolved over time and became romantic during Covid. Any speculation to the contrary is false,” Heller says.) However, multiple of his colleagues claim that it started decades ago.

According to one source familiar with the CNN investigation and another who is a Democratic operative, Gollust’s ongoing connections to Gov. Cuomo was also questioned. According to two sources, Gollust and Governor Cuomo exchanged text messages in which they agreed that they would meet up for drinks at multiple occasions in 2019 or 2020. Cuomo approached Gollust in early 2020, months after splitting from Sandra Lee. “You don’t want to see me now that I’m single?”She said, “A drink with you would be the best date I’ve had in a while.”He sent Gollust a message four months later, suggesting that he be heraclist. “pool boy.” She responded that she’d welcome that scenario, and they set up a call. Gollust replied to their texting by writing, “That was fun. Sleep well.”

(“It’s no secret that Allison and Governor Cuomo had a friendly relationship after Allison briefly worked for him in 2012,”Heller. “For Rolling Stone to suggest through innuendo and creative syntax — and no evidence — that there was a sexual relationship between the two in 2020 is disgusting, sexist, and patently false. In fact, Allison was never in the same room as the governor during 2020.” A representative for Cuomo adds, “Allison and the governor were former colleagues and friends, never had a romantic relationship, and it is impossible to have two sources saying otherwise because it is a total fabrication.”)

Gollust’s texts went beyond friends’ banter. When a rumor circulated that Trump was about to shut down New York City, Gollust invited the governor to come on CNN’s Day of the NewThe next morning, “squash it.”She joked with her ex-boss. “I’m pretty sure I stopped being your publicist 8 years ago, but apparently I still am.”He also asked her to criticize his press conference on another occasion.

Heller says, “These are innocuous, mundane conversations that are being spun into a nefarious tale.”She acknowledges that Gollust approached the governor for help to cut through bureaucratic red tape in order to open a Manhattan birthing center. Months later, Heller also confirms, Gollust hit up Cuomo with a request involving Billy Joel, who’d once hosted a Cuomo-campaign fundraiser. She began it with “I never ask you for favors, but . . .,”Cuomo responded, “Yes, u do ask me for favors, and that’s okay. It’s mutual.”

“It was clear that she leveraged the relationship [with Andrew Cuomo],”The Democratic operative agrees. “There was a consistent exchange of favors between them.”

The inappropriate relationship, coupled with clear signs of collaboration, sealed Gollust’s fate. CNN cut her loose on February 15, 2015. (WarnerMedia declined to comment on questions about Gollust and Cuomo’s relationship and all other matters, pointing to Kilar’s statement regarding the investigation. Heller insists that CNN’s characterization of Gollust’s journalistic integrity is a “retrofitted justification for an unmerited dismissal.”)

It all sounds too incestuous.It was not unusual for Zucker to do this in the culture that accompanied him everywhere he went. For all his many journalistic wins, a brazen disregard for workplace ethics seemed to envelop his newsrooms — a function, perhaps, of his early successes and the privileges he enjoyed along the way.

Zucker was raised by a cardiologist, and a teacher outside of Miami. He graduated from Harvard in 1986 and became a field producer three years later. Today.Andrea Smith, who was the original producer of the show and had been with the network from 1975 to 1975, taught the new recruit how to produce and edit stories. “I saw what salary they were giving him right out of the gate, and it was like 10 times what I was making, maybe more, and here I was being his tutor,”The Emmy winner recalls. “Men were treated so much better than women in those days, because that’s just the way it was.”

Three years after his start with great fortune, Zucker was made the boss by being named executive producer of The Wall Street Journal. TodayAt the age 26. The producers bought him a kids’ lunchbox because he was so young, and he was quickly dubbed a wunderkind. His arrival marked the beginning of the golden age of morning television. “He was the best producer I ever worked under,”Smith. “He was unparalleled at motivating the producers under him, and just knew how to manage a show, and knew how to get people to do their best.”

His Midas touch was in directing production at the iconic streetside studio and assembling an amazing team, which included Katie Couric (and Matt Lauer). A key addition off-camera was Gollust, who, according to her bio, joined the network in 1996 — the same year Zucker married another NBC employee, Caryn Nathanson — and made her leap to senior publicist within a year. According to NBC alums it was known that Zucker and Gollust were much more than friends. They flew frequently on the NBC private plane together. TodaySources claim that the colleague was also in a discreet relationship with a married top news executive. Lauer, the rising star in television, started targeting vulnerable young women at this point, especially temp and receptionists.

Addie Zione was one of the women who brought up accusations against Lauer back in 2017. She began interning at TodayThe show’s popularity was at its peak in 1999. But there was also a darker side. Zinone was a producer assistant, and Lauer was a newlywed superstar when they first fell in love. The gross imbalance of power led to a consensual relationship, which she now attributes to Zinone. The affair included encounters in Lauer’s office, a now-familiar MO for the anchor.

While Zinone describes Zucker as “nothing but professional” toward her, she is skeptical that he didn’t know about his star employee’s reputation. “Matt’s behavior was despicable and ongoing, and that doesn’t happen in a vacuum,”Today, she said. “A lot of what we’ve heard about Matt was in-house, meaning he had to feel protection from those above him.”

“It was totally an old-boys’ club,”Smith. “Everybody knew about the affairs and everything going on. The idea that [network brass] would say, ‘Oh, we had no idea [about Lauer’s conduct]’ is very funny. Everybody talked about it. All of the highest-up executives at NBC knew.”(Heller strongly discredits this assertion, citing Zucker “was entirely unaware of Matt Lauer’s behavior while the two overlapped at NBC. If he had been, he would have taken action immediately.”)

The atmosphere was already positive when Tom Touchet arrived at ABC News in 2002. “like Mad Men,”He says. Zucker was president of NBC Entertainment a few years before, and, with another promotion in 2003 he was also in charge of the news section. Touchet continues to call the 2004 Athens Olympics “The Athens Olympics”. “the weirdest melting pot of everybody sleeping together.”

Lauer was a particular example of someone who was more courageous as the years went by. In 2005, Smith sent the anchor a thank-you note via an internal communications channel after he’d handled a particularly tricky interview. Smith’s response surprised her. “Are you buttering me up?”Smith said Lauer wrote. He began to detail the places he wanted to spread butter onto her body, including on her thighs. He concluded the message by requesting: “Wear that skirt. It’s easy to get off.”

Smith was confused. She was not used to wearing leggings on her days. Skirts weren’t something she wore often. She quickly figured out that the message wasn’t meant for her. Instead, she discovered that it was meant for a young receptionist with similar names.

Smith said she felt it was professional. “death knell” that she’d found out about the affair. According to Smith and Touchet, the environment under Zucker was one where it was unknown but well understood that high-ranking men were making moves against underlings who would be committed career suicide to make them report. Lauer’s reputation was well-known internally by then, yet he continued to be put on the highest pedestal at the network. (Even powerful women lost if he crossed them. Ann Curry was just one year into her time at NBC when she was given the boot by executives. Today co-anchor reportedly in order to entice Lauer, who’d made his disdain for her clear, to re-up his contract.) Smith claims she was fired in 2006 after 30 years of service to NBC. She believes in the “dangerous” information she’d acquired about Lauer could have been a factor. (NBC vehemently denied knowledge of Lauer’s conduct at the time.)

While doubt remains about what Zucker knew of Lauer’s behavior, NBC’s top dog offered a clue at a 2008 Friars Club roast of the anchor that was dubbed “three hours of dick and pussy jokes,”Many at the expense Curry. “It’s just good to see Matt up here and not under my desk,” Zucker cracked. “I don’t want to say Matt’s a germaphobe, but he’s the only guy I know who uses Purell both before and after he masturbates.”

Even though all the information about Lauer was made public, Zucker maintained a friendly relationship with the #MeToo Pariah. In 2019, he and Gollust attended Zucker’s 54th-birthday party at New York’s McKittrick Hotel. Couric’s tell-all 2021 memoir, Go There describes the threesome palling around at Don Lemon’s 2019 engagement party in the Hamptons.

“I think Jeff probably would have hired Matt [at CNN] if there hadn’t been so much blowback,”According to one of the personalities on-air who has worked with both. “Jeff likes to repay loyalty by hiring people.”

Lauer wasn’t the only bad actor Zucker enabled. In the mid-aughts his bromance with Trump was full swing, their codependent lust after ratings fueling noxious behaviour. Trump sat in a plush seat at Studio 1A, Rockefeller Plaza on February 3, 2005 and was ready to cross-promote. The Apprentice alongside that show’s producer, Mark Burnett, who was appearing remotely from L.A. Lauer affectionately referred to Trump as “the Donald,” while the guests prattled about the series’ soon-to-be-launched spinoff with Martha Stewart. Lauer did the impossible: He noted that The Apprentice’Trump asked Trump if he noticed that a decline in audience numbers was evident after the first season’s smash-hit success. “Why do you think that is?”

Trump spun the truth — claiming the ratings were actually up, and “in the number-one demographic, are very substantial” — but Lauer pushed back. “The information I have is [that] in the premiere the ratings were better, but since then they’ve been down about 20 percent. That’s not what you have?”

Trump stormed into Control Room after the segment. He was orange with a red face. “and had a hissy fit,”Touchet, then running for office, said that Today.Zucker then followed and praised Touchet for asking a difficult question. Then, Touchet says, Zucker pulled him aside and — borrowing a line from Trump — told him, “You’re fucking fired.”

“Trump was the worst guest we ever had to deal with, and he was serially abusive to my staff,” Touchet says. “I heard from Jeff and Mark Burnett daily. Trump was on the show constantly.”

Touchet claims that he was finally fired after a few months. He still had years on his contract. (“Tom Touchet was not fired because of any interview with Donald Trump,” Heller says.) Later in that year, TodayTrump literally had a red carpet laid out for him before he appeared on the show. “The Imperial March” — Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars — as he walked on, with Al Roker introducing him as the “king of the universe.”It was funny, even though it seemed silly, these gambits helped Trump to burnish his image via The Apprentice: The leader, who is both respected and fearsome. For millions of Americans outside New York City — where Trump was largely viewed as nothing more than a carnival barker — the cartoon character that Zucker and Co. had drummed up to goose ratings was becoming real.

This TV-star glow was not surprising considering Trump’s previous political ambitions. He even ran for the presidency in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket. But the reality behind the scenes was even worse: Trump’s growing stardom seemed to amplify some of his most insidious qualities. Trump was already a notorious racist, having been sued decades prior for housing discrimination against Black renters. He had also demanded the death penalty against five Black and Latino teens wrongly convicted of rape in a Central Park Jogger case. Trump reportedly used liberally the n-word on the set. The Apprentice according to sources in former contestant Omarosa Manginault Newman’s book about her time in the Trump White House, Unhinged.The infamous “Badger” was also born around this time. Access Hollywoodtape, where Trump casually bragged about to host Billy Bush (during a interview for one NBC show about his guest spot in another NBC program, The Soap). Days of Our LivesThis article is about how to grab beautiful women “by the pussy”Recorded.

As with Lauer, it’s unclear how much Zucker knew about his cash cow’s bad behavior in the studio, but Trump’s audaciousness suggests he wasn’t exactly keeping his proclivities a secret. Yet Zucker continued to use other NBC programs to both feed and siphon Trump’s celebrity — with dire consequences.

“By putting Trump in [the] pseudo-factual setting [of a] reality show, Zucker helped to create the Trump phenomenon,”Samuel Freedman is a Columbia University journalism professor. “And the whole country is now paying a terrible price.”

By the time Zucker had ascended to president and CEO of NBC Universal in 2007, his and Trump’s worlds were ever more intertwined. Trump and NBC had merged the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. According to reports, NBC Universal donated $10,000 to the Trump Foundation that year. Trump’s 2007 business how-to book, You can think big and still be a kickass.Even cited a Zucker comment about how, in post-Friends world, Trump was NBC’s new Jennifer Aniston. (“He said very, very nicely, ‘Donald Trump may not have hair as good as [her], but he’s got great ratings.’ ”)

Still, Zucker’s fiefdom was crumbling from the inside. Despite all the cross promotion, The Apprentice ratings had continued to slip, along with the rest of NBC’s prime-time lineup. Today’The numbers were also affected. The headaches began to pile up. In 2009, Zucker engineered Jay Leno’s disastrous move to prime time, only to reverse course four months later and move him back to late night, where an already installed Conan O’Brien was heading up The Tonight Show.

The corporate winds were also shifting. Comcast closed its 51 percent acquisition at Universal in the next year. Zucker was then shown the door. Though he’d received a golden parachute pegged at $30 million to $40 million, he was facing his first career comeuppance.

“Jeff liked gimmicks. The gimmick of the missing plane, the gimmick of Trump, and Andrew and Chris Cuomo and their dog- and-pony show. This is an important story. People are dying. It’s not about ‘Who does Mom love more?’ It was ridiculous.”

As Zucker closed one door, Trump was moving through the other. The ApprenticeIt had opened and laid the foundations for a future political life. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011, he floated a possible presidential run — and, in a taste of what was to come, began promoting the Obama birther conspiracy. He later reversed course and said he wouldn’t run, deciding to milk the promotional machine of The Apprentice — which also earned him $427 million over its run — a little longer.

After a few years of executive-producing,Katie Couric, his old colleague, on her short-lived Disney ABC syndicated show talk show. Katie, Zucker left in January 2013 to run CNN — a job Trump bragged he’d secured for his old friend. The degree of Trump’s involvement is murky. Other than a few tweets endorsing Zucker“Great move by CNN if they sign Jeff Zucker. He was responsible for me and The Apprentice on NBC — became #1 show!”According to a source, Trump had a pleasant conversation with Phil Kent, then-Turner Broadcasting System CEO and chairman at the gala dinner for The American Turkish Society in 2012. “a genius.”(Kent has declined to comment on the piece but recently stated that he does not regret his decision.

As CNN president, Zucker’s first hires included Chris Cuomo and Gollust, who resigned from her position in the governor’s office, where she’d been working less than six months. At first, she reported to the network’s senior vice president for Turner Broadcasting, but within seven months, she began reporting directly to Zucker.

Unlike NBC, whose policy stated that supervisor-subordinate romances were “strongly discouraged,” CNN’s rules were far more strict. According to the company’s code of conduct, “To avoid a conflict of interest, employees must not hire or supervise (directly or indirectly) someone with whom they have a personal relationship, and if you are in a position to influence the employment, advancement, or hiring of someone with whom you have a personal relationship . . . you must inform the HR department in advance of taking any action.” But as network president, Zucker had oversight of the HR department, and apparently didn’t care about flouting these rules.

Although some inside the network resent the Gollust relationship there, Zucker seems to have been loved by many CNN staffers, especially the highly-paid anchors whose careers were he supported. Don Lemon called him “the backbone, the glue, and the spirit of this company, the man who I personally credit with change in my life, the man who believed in me when nobody else did.”As the years passed, Zucker came under fire from critics for giving too much airtime to Trump, his former superstar. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, CNN was mocked for its breathless coverage of the candidate’s rallies, which the network frequently aired from start to finish. Sometimes, producers would leave a camera fixed to a podium with a text chyron. “Trump About to Take the Stage.” Trump also regularly guested on the network’s political shows, having reasonably civil conversations with its anchors about his divisive rhetoric. This tactic worked: CNN consistently trounced Fox and MSNBC in ratings during the election cycle and boasted its highest-watched year in 2016

At a December 2016 dinner held at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Zucker was heckled and booed when the conversation turned to CNN’s coverage of Trump. “The crowd did not react positively,”One attendee stated this. “It wasn’t just GOP people. It was people on the left who were upset over CNN’s role in giving that kind of attention to Trump.”Zucker seemed neither shocked nor contrite. Instead, Zucker argued that Trump was great at ratings and profitability. He also insisted that Trump’s old cronies were his best. Apprentice buddy was the only Republican candidate willing to call into CNN’s morning show. “Cable news in general, and CNN in particular, should not be held responsible for the fact that Donald Trump said yes to those interviews and the others didn’t,”He said.

According to sources, Trump and Zucker spoke about coverage in the lead-up to the 2016 election through Trump’s disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen was also a frequent guest on CNN. Cohen denied any involvement. Rolling Stone.In 2020, however, there will be a segment of Tucker Carlson TonightThe host played audio clips that he claimed were from a 2016 call between Cohen, Zucker. In the recording, the CNN exec praised Trump’s campaigning, offered advice for that night’s Republican debate, and said he wanted to discuss giving Trump a weekly show.

To many observers, Zucker’s legacy is inextricably linked with the 45th president, to his detriment. “Overall, I think Zucker is a very flawed figure,” says NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. “He definitely participated in the onslaught of Trump coverage that was part of his rise to power. He also turned CNN into an extremely adversarial network to Trump when that was needed. That’s part of his legacy as well. Which is not to say that they balance each other. But you have to reckon with both of those things.”

But even when the tone of the relationship between Trump and CNN shifted, Zucker couldn’t resist bragging that Trump’s animosity was personal. It all went back to their. “strong, 20-year friendship,” as he explained on an episode of David Axelrod’s podcast, before crowing without a hint of irony that when Trump didn’t get the “preferential treatment” he expected based on the pair’s long history, he turned on the network.

Of course, Trump is a man known to thrive on negative attention, so CNN’s hammering of his presidency still played directly into his hands. Trump branded CNN and other mainstream media as victims of bias as the once neutral network became more partisan. “fake news.”The Trump-versus CNN cage match set the stage to the misinformation age. Large swathes of the public began questioning everything the network reported from Covid death rates and 2020 election results. And still, Zucker couldn’t quite quit their co-dependent relationship, knowing that wall-to-wall Trump equaled stellar ratings, even as it contributed to the collapse of discourse in the U.S. “Jeff is responsible for the death of nuance,”As one NBC News alumnus who worked with Zucker put it,

The pandemic raged in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo’s star was rising, and he was touted as a potential challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic ticket. Zucker, seeing a new rating bonanza, changed course on an internal policy that barred Chris Cuomo’s interview with his brother. “You get trust from authenticity and relatability and vulnerability,” Zucker told The New York Times’Ben Smith was the one who made the decision. “That’s what the brothers Cuomo are giving us right now.”

On-air exchanges among the Cuomos were often funny, such as Chris asking his older sibling questions: “With all of this adulation that you’re getting for doing your job, are you thinking about running for president? Tell the audience.”

“Jeff liked gimmicks,” says one former anchor who worked with Zucker, citing CNN’s incessant coverage when a Malaysian passenger jet disappeared from radar in 2014. “The whole gimmick of the missing plane, the gimmick of Trump, and the gimmick of Andrew Cuomo and Chris Cuomo having their little dog-and-pony show. This is an important story. People are dying. It’s not about, ‘Who does mom love more?’ It was ridiculous, so non-journalistic at every turn. There’s no excuse for it at all.”

For a time, Zucker’s abuses of power went unchecked; CNN operated like an island within the massive portfolio of WarnerMedia (as the network’s parent company was renamed following AT&T’s completed acquisition of Time Warner in 2018). Jason Kilar, the Warner CEO, took control in May 2020. He began to overhaul the media and entertainment conglomerate. One of his first decisions: to remove Zucker’s oversight of CNN’s finances, human resources, and corporate communications, the division run by Gollust. Zucker had no input in the matter, and was given just 24 hours’ notice. WarnerMedia journalists questioned Zucker about his relationship with Gollust after the move.

However, several storms were approaching at the same time. In February 2021, Governor. Cuomo was involved in the #MeToo scandal, in which 11 women accused him of sexual misconduct. Letitia James, New York Attorney general, did her own investigation and found that the matter was not being investigated. Day of the NewAnchor Chris Cuomo reached out to “sources,” including other reporters, to gauge whether more women were going to come forward, and relayed what he was hearing to his brother’s advisers. Even more shocking, Gollust played a role behind the scenes as Andrew Cuomo navigated the fallout; she connected with Chris as he guided his brother’s response to the claims, according to sources, much as Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund co-founders Roberta Kaplan and Tina Tchen had. (Those women resigned in August 2021 over their involvement in the governor’s handling of the sexual-harassment allegations.)

Zucker was still in the news despite numerous scandals. In June 2021, he was criticized for allowing CNN’s chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, to return to the air after he’d exposed himself on a Zoom with New Yorker magazine colleagues. In September, as Cravath, Swaine & Moore launched its investigation into Chris Cuomo, Zucker steadfastly backed the anchor. In December, the actor Jussie Smollett testified in his case involving a falsely reported hate crime that he’d received advice from Lemon in the aftermath of the incident, prompting him not to hand over his phone records to Chicago police; the issue was never raised internally at the network.

Early that same month, the tide apparently turned on Chris Cuomo when Washington, D.C., attorney Debra Katz sent a letter to CNN’s general counsel stating she represented a Jane Doe who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Cuomo when he was an anchor for ABC’s 20/20CNN should hold Cuomo liable for his actions. (A Cuomo representative says, “These apparently anonymous allegations are not true.”)

CNN fired Cuomo Dec. 4 for cause. WarnerMedia sources claim that the assault allegation wasn’t a factor. Six days later, CNN fired Cuomo’s Day of the NewJohn Griffin, producer, was indicted in Vermont by a federal grand jury for attempting to induce minors as young he nine years old to engage in illegal sexual activity. (Griffin has pleaded guilty. That same month, news surfaced that police in Virginia had launched a criminal probe into Rick Saleeby, who resigned from his post as a senior producer on Jake Tapper’s The LeadThe investigation also covered allegations from “potential juvenile victims.”Heller states that “Jeff had no knowledge of either of these two producers’ behavior.” But by the time the Cravath investigation brought Zucker and Gollust’s misdeeds to Kilar’s attention in late January, the writing was on the wall for Zucker.

Kilar acted swiftly to oust the media industry’s most high-profile executive, who departed without severance. However, Zucker, who is a master at crafting the narrative, was able to negotiate the terms of his February 2 exit, sources familiar. They cited only Gollust’s supposedly recent romantic relationship. Although at least two publications mentioned journalistic errors, nothing was said about them. Rolling StoneThe New York PostInvoked the Andrew Cuomo ties. Lemon and Tapper were among the high-paid anchors who bemoaned their lost leader. This was in hyperbolic terms, which reflected the loyalty Zucker instilled with his favorite talent. (Tapper: “[Chris Cuomo] threatened Jeff. Jeff said, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ And Chris blew the place up. How do we get past that perception — that this is the bad guy winning?”)

He leaves behind a media landscape that is more fractured than it was before, and public distrust in journalists at its highest point. And why not, when a peek behind the curtain reveals secret dealings between his news outlets and the politicians they’re supposed to hold to account, coverage dictated not by the issues but by whatever sensational dreck would keep eyes glued to the screen, and newsrooms where alleged predators roamed freely? Zucker may not have invented the culture of powerful men exploiting the women around them, but he incubated it for the modern media age, empowering people who were supposed to hold the public’s trust — but couldn’t even be trusted to keep their hands off of their subordinates. The most shocking thing about his departure is the political landscape he created.

“I understood who and what Donald Trump was, because I was from New York, and I understood that he was just a one-man publicity machine,”In 2011, Zucker addressed a college audience. “Even if the show wasn’t good, he was going to say it was good. Even if the ratings weren’t good, he was going to say the ratings were great. Nobody could generate publicity like Donald Trump. And by the way, that turned out to be entirely true.”

Many are eager to see how this once-whiz kid reinvents himself. Although a job in journalism seems unlikely, given what happened to two networks under his watch, it is possible that he will return to showbusiness. He has also said he would love to run the Miami Dolphins, and hasn’t ruled out a run for office himself. Wherever he lands, former colleagues are sure it’ll be on his feet. “Don’t hold the garage sale for Jeff Zucker,”One. “Someone will hire him. He’s too smart.”

And as for the impact he’s had on American culture, some say it’s too early to call. “It’s a 100 percent fair assessment to say Jeff laid the groundwork for a Trump presidency,” says Touchet. “From the beginning, there was a symbiotic relationship. But I don’t know if that’s Jeff’s legacy, because I don’t think he’s done. I know Jeff, and he’s not going away. I don’t know where he’s going to land, but there’s too much drive and power hunger to sit sideways for too long.”