According to CNN reporter Jamie Gangel, four members of Congress called her Wednesday to say they feared for the republic after her network’s president resigned.
THE QUOTE
During a Wednesday night meeting between CNN’s Washington bureau and Jason Kilar, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, Warner Media, Gangel said that the lawmakers had shared their dismay with her about Jeff Zucker’s ouster that morning.
- “The first calls I got this morning were from four members of the Jan. 6 committee, who felt devastated for our democracy, because Jeff was not going to be around to make sure that CNN is able to do its job,” Gangel said, according to a Vanity Fair report.
- Gangel later clarified that she meant to say four members of Congress called her, one of whom was part of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
- Other “reeling” CNN staffers shared Gangel’s assessment that “the company has made a terrible mistake” in pushing out Zucker, supposedly for dating a colleague, per the report.
MEANWHILE
Zucker got more media support from an unlikely source: Tucker Carlson, on his Fox News show Wednesday, lauded the outgoing executive’s “creative masculine energy.”
- “Jeff Zucker tried to do something new,” Carlson said. “We hated what he did. We did not share his vision. We found it repugnant and destructive. But at least Jeff Zucker had a vision. Too few still do.”