Within hours of Jeff Zucker’s unexpected resignation as the president of CNN Worldwide, former president Donald Trump piled on with a statement slamming Zucker as a “world-class sleazebag.”
“Jeff Zucker, a world-class sleazebag who has headed ratings and real-news-challenged CNN for far too long, has been terminated for numerous reasons, but predominately because CNN has lost its way with viewers and everybody else,” Trump’s statement read. “Now is a chance to put Fake News in the backseat because there may not be anything more important than straightening out the horrendous LameStream Media in our Country, and in the case of CNN, throughout the World. Jeff Zucker is gone — congratulations to all!”
Trump was responding to Zucker’s abrupt announcement that he was resigning immediately as the head of the news network he’s led since 2013 after failing to disclose a “consensual relationship” with a colleague, who was later revealed to be CNN chief marketing officer Allison Gollust.
The two have had a complicated relationship: Zucker brought Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” to NBC when he served as president of NBC Entertainment, which boosted both the network’s numbers and Trump’s popularity and paved the way for his move into politics.
“I have no regrets about the part that I played in his career,” Zucker said of Trump in a 2020 interview with the New York Times.
But Zucker became a frequent target of Trump on his Twitter feed and in public speeches during the 2016 campaign and Trump’s presidency, with the former reality star criticizing Zucker and CNN‘s frequently harsh coverage of his administration.
When AT&T moved to acquire CNN owner Time Warner in 2017, Trump’s Justice Department tried to hold up the deal. When the merger went through in June 2018, Trump urged Zucker’s new bosses to fire him.
“The hatred and extreme bias of me by @CNN has clouded their thinking and made them unable to function,” Trump said in August of that year. “Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, & AT&T should fire him to save credibility!”