Chris Cuomo Reportedly Offered $9 Million and Jeff Zucker’s Butt to Shut up and Go Away but Will It Be Enough? – Opinion

On Wednesday, CNN’s Grand Poobah Jeff Zucker was fired over a secret adulterous affair he carried on with a subordinate but that everyone knew about (It’s Always an Open Secret in the Media). The relationship began 25 years ago but changed due to COVID (CNN’s Jeff Zucker Resigns After Revelations of an Inappropriate Workplace Relationship), or so we’re told without any real insight into what that might mean in terrestrial terms.

WarnerMedia sent Jason Kilar, its CEO, to help smoothen the rough edges and unravel the twists of the incompetents. In my view, WarnerMedia should have struck while the iron was hot and sent most of their “talent” to the unemployment line along with Zucker rather than paying their salaries listening to them snivel, but that’s just me. Jake Tapper might have been able to get at the bottom of this corporate-sponsored cry jag.

“Jason, if you could address the perception that Chris Cuomo gets fired by CNN, Chris Cuomo hires a high-powered lawyer who has a scorched-earth policy, who then makes it very clear to the world that unless Jeff gives Chris Cuomo his money, they’re going to blow the place up. Stuff starts getting leaked to gossip websites about Jeff and Allison… and then weeks later, Jeff comes forward, discloses this and resigns—not willingly. An outside observer might say, ‘Wow, it looks like Chris Cuomo succeeded. He threatened, Jeff said we don’t negotiate with terrorists, and he blew the place up.’ How do we get past that perception, that this is the bad guy winning?”

Maybe you don’t.

Chris Cuomo isn’t likely to get much more than half of the $18 million he’s seeking as a settlement in his feud with CNN now that Jeff Zucker has resigned, The Post has learned.

Sources told The Post that Zucker was trying to prevent a potential Cuomo suit against CNN being filed. The ex-CNN chief was named multiple times in a draft of a suit, which hasn’t been filed, sources said.

Zucker’s resignation came as part of an agreement hammered out with AT&T chief John Stankey, sources say. Sources said that the deal would have Zucker leave CNN with no fight, and Stankey settle with Cuomo.

That way, Cuomo’s potentially damaging additional accusations about Zucker would be kept from the public, these sources say.

Can I just say that “Stankey” might be the best name ever for a Fortune 500 CEO?

According to sources, Zucker had to step down from his position as the head of the global television network. However, he agreed that he would retain some privacy in exchange for leaving the country quickly.

“Jeff cut a deal to say ‘I’ll leave, and you settle with Cuomo,’” a source told The Post. “He thought AT&T would fight a lawsuit and it would go public otherwise.” If Cuomo filed his lawsuit and AT&T fought it, then potentially damaging information about Zucker could come out, too, the sources said.

Zucker claimed he quit because he had a romantic relationship with his colleague Allison Gollust, but he did not disclose this. Cuomo, in a draft of a suit that hasn’t been filed, claims Zucker’s misdeeds go beyond that, The Post has reported.

On the whole, though, the “Chris Cuomo pulling the temple down” narrative is just too pat. One can’t shake the feeling that there is something much more significant that does not involve Cuomo hanging out there. Moreover, the “I didn’t tell them about my mistress of a quarter-century” excuse sounds exceedingly lame given all the facts and circumstances around the two lovebirds:

Sources who knew Zucker and Gollust well back then date to the early days of their careers. The Today Show in the mid-Nineties dispute their statements in the memo. They tell you the truth. Rolling Stone, Zucker became romantically entangled with Gollust back in 1996, when she was a trainee in NBC’s corporate communications group and he was the married executive producer of The Today Show. “It was the worst-kept secret, but Jeff was seen as untouchable,” says one insider. “And their statements [in the memo] are total bullshit.”

From the way it sounds, Zucker’s strategy might have been foreseen by Winston Churchill when he said, “You were given the choice between War and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

IANAL, but it doesn’t seem to me that Zucker stepping down does anything to deter Cuomo from fighting for the $18 million he believes is owed to him or from him trying to burn CNN to the ground while collecting, particularly after the bashing his former colleagues gave him in the meeting with WarnerMedia’s Kilar described above. It would seem to me that whatever misdeeds perpetrated by Zucker as head of CNN remain subject to litigation no matter Zucker’s employment status. In fact, it is hard to imagine any information that was worth $9 million, and Jeff Zucker’s head in a tasteful wicker basket that would not be worth $18 million and Zucker’s head.

On the other hand, maybe Chris Cuomo has stuff he doesn’t want to be aired out, and he’ll decide half-a-loaf is better than mutually assured destruction.

Re: Alisyn Camerota’s comments about Jeff Zucker…

You won’t forget about the New Day salute to Chris Cuomo. The pair held hands for several minutes on Camerota’s legs, while Cuomo was seated just feet from them. pic.twitter.com/ivjkEqnRIN

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) February 3, 2022