Early Saturday night, CNN and boss Jeff Zucker fired long-time CNN host Chris Cuomo “effective immediately” following a year-plus of ethics-free behavior from both parties as Cuomo worked with and gave softball interviews to his brother, scandal-ridden former Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY).
CNN said in a statement that Cuomo has been “terminated…effective immediately” four days after he had been suspended due to a trove of text messages showing the depths of his relationship with his brother’s top aides to weather the sexual harassment claims leveled against Andrew. Revealing that they had brought in “a respected law firm” to investigate Cuomo (after long having not done so), CNN said that move unveiled “additional information.”
The statement concluded with a claim that “[d]espite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”
The network wouldn’t detail this new, damning information, so time will tell if Zucker will share said “information” or simply move on from this as if the downfall of his friend and now-ex-employee never happened. That’s on top of the fact that they still proclaim themselves to be the “most trusted name in news” and “facts first.”
Cuomo released his own statement on the matter
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) December 4, 2021
In the days prior, the network’s chief media apologist Brian Stelter claimed Cuomo would be back on-air as soon as January.
Incredibly, CNN almost immediately brought the news to viewers on the air following the 5:09 p.m. Eastern CNN Public Relations tweet and in contrast to their delay when Fredo was suspended on Tuesday.
Even more ironic? Look who was the person who was on-air at 5:22 p.m. Eastern when it came down:
#BREAKING: I am not making this up -- Jim Acosta was on the air when CNN announced that they fired Chris Cuomo, leaving him to break the news to viewers alongside Brian Stelter
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 4, 2021
Incredible. pic.twitter.com/h2gcnMh1Q3
However, as The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple tweeted, it’s “a stunning thing for CNN to announce at 5:09 p.m. on a Saturday” on top of the fact that they long ignored “signs that something investigable was amiss.”
Zucker emailed staff prior to the announcement, saying that he had “let Chris know” earlier in the day “that we are ending his employment at CNN.” The man referred to as Dwarf King by Tucker Carlson showed the weaselly lengths he went to avoid axing his friend, calling it “not easy” with “a lot of complex factors involved.”
Spare us.
As for what’s missing, CNN didn’t disclose why it was so necessary to suddenly terminate Cuomo at a time when many in the media felt that his abuse of sources and his known breaches of journalistic ethics were already enough to warrant his termination.
Joining the likes of Dan Rather and Brian Williams in losing a plum job at a major network, Cuomo still maintains a show on SiriusXM called Let’s Get After It (at least as of this blog’s publication).
And in addition to what the new evidence is, it shows just how much of a liar he’s been. Not only was he lying to his viewers about his involvement with his brother’s defense, but also his employers. Again, it’ll be worth monitoring to see what SiriusXM determines as to the fate of his POTUS show.
With Cuomo gone, what is poor Don Lemon to do? Based on his interaction with him during what became Fredo’s final show on Monday, even Lemon seemed to have figured it was curtains for his dear friend.
Better yet, this is perhaps the biggest question for CNN to answer (besides producing the new information they learned about Fredo): What did Zucker know and when did he know it?
Stay tuned to NewsBusters for more on this breaking story.
