Playbook PM: Inside CNN's explosive Zucker meeting

From: POLITICO Playbook - Thursday Feb 03,2022 05:55 pm

Feb 03, 2022

By Rachael Bade, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun

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MUST-READ OF THE DAY: BEHIND THE SCENES AT CNN — WarnerMedia CEO JASON KILAR held a meeting with CNN staff on Wednesday night in an attempt to explain the sudden dismissal of JEFF ZUCKER as president of the network. It didn’t go well.

Puck News’ Dylan Byers obtained a recording of the more than hourlong Q&A session between Kilar and CNN’s top talent, and has an extremely juicy, comprehensive readout.

— The big-picture takeaway: “CNN’s top staff believe that Zucker’s punishment was unnecessary; they are dubious about Kilar’s motives for the decision (and wonder if his own fraught relationship with Zucker played a role); and they are at a loss to understand how the network will function in the absence of a leader who was intimately involved in nearly every aspect of the network’s programming.”

Some highlights of the concerns expressed by top CNN stars, who all loved Zucker:

— DANA BASH: “For a lot of us, the feeling is that, for Jeff, the punishment didn’t fit the crime … There are so many people who work here and got a second chance, because that’s what Jeff believed in, and … it feels like he didn’t get that chance.”

— GLORIA BORGER: “Why was it handled this way? … I mean, Jeff just kind of disappeared. There wasn’t a graceful exit … Can you explain that?”

— Quite the exchange between Kilar and KAITLAN COLLINS:

Collins: “Were you aware of Jeff and ALLISON [GOLLUST’s ] relationship before this?” Kilar: “No, I was not aware of their relationship before this.” Collins: “And when did you become aware?” Kilar: “Again, out of respect for this process, I am absolutely not going to answer that line of questioning.” Collins: “Of when you became aware?” Kilar: “Of when I became aware, that’s right.”

Collins: “OK, I don’t really see how that pertains to Jeff. But my other question would be, given that it’s been reported that you’re said to be negotiating your exit from the company after the merger goes through: did you consult with other executives before you made this decision?”

Kilar: “There is a group of folks that you would expect to be involved in this from a legal standpoint and an H.R. standpoint.” Collins: “But did you consult with other executives, maybe the ones who have taken over for Jeff on an interim basis, about this decision and the effect that it would have on the company?” Kilar: “I am not going to answer that question.” Collins: “Does that mean, ‘No’?” Kilar: “I am not going to answer the question.”

— JAKE TAPPER brought up fired ex-anchor CHRIS CUOMO’s severance fight with Zucker, which is why investigators began asking Zucker about his relationship with his top aide. “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 up the place…. How do we get past that perception, that this is the bad guy winning?”

When Kilar dodged, Collins pressed him: “I think the issue is that it’s not a perception. What Jake just described is actually what happened here … Cuomo is a man scorned because he was fired for being held accountable … and Jeff is part of the result of this. And it sounds like you didn’t consult any other executives on removing a critical part of the company.”

Kilar wouldn’t go there. Read the whole Byers story. It’s worth your time.

Good Thursday afternoon.

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BULLETIN — U.S. officials have “acquired intelligence about a Russian plan to fabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine using a faked video that would build on recent disinformation campaigns, according to senior administration officials and others briefed on the material,” NYT’s Julian Barnes reports . “The plan — which the U.S. hopes to spoil by making public — involved staging and filming a fabricated attack by the Ukrainian military either on Russian territory or against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine.”

ISIS LEADER KILLS SELF DURING U.S. RAID — President JOE BIDEN announced this morning that a U.S. Special Operations unit successfully carried out a mission in Syria during which Islamic State leader ABU IBRAHIM AL-HASHIMI AL-QURAYSHI “exploded a bomb that killed him[self] and members of his own family, including women and children,” NYT’s Eric Schmitt and Ben Hubbard report.

“American helicopters ferried the commandos into position after midnight, surrounding a house in Atmeh, a town close to the border with Turkey in rebel-held Idlib Province … A long, tense standoff ensued, with loudspeakers blaring warnings in Arabic for everyone in the house to surrender, neighbors said. After about two hours, the house’s occupants had not emerged and a major battle erupted, with heavy machine gun fire and apparent missile strikes that damaged the house, collapsed some of its walls and blew out its windows.”

— The scene in the Situation Room, via CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Nikki Carvajal : “Biden watched anxiously as an American helicopter suffered mechanical problems on the ground. There was relief in the room when children emerged from the first floor of the building, running to safety. Moments later, an explosion rocked the site: a suicide detonation that killed … al-Qurayshi, his wife and his children, blowing their bodies outside the building and onto the surrounding land. …

“Biden had been ‘very steeped in the operational details’ after months of planning, a senior administration official said, which included the model of the building housing the top ISIS leader, brought by military leaders into the Situation Room in December. He engaged in a ‘constant give and take’ with his military commanders.”

— In remarks at the White House, Biden said the choice to “pursue a special forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people rather than targeting him with an air strike” was made with the knowledge that al-Qurayshi “chose to surround himself with families, including children.”

— The context, via AP’s Bassem Mroue : “[Al-Qurayshi’s] death comes as IS militants, after years of low-level hit-and-run ambushes, had begun to carry out bolder, higher profile attacks. Last month, its fighters attacked a prison in northeast Syria to free their jailed comrades, leading to a 10-day battle with Kurdish-led forces that left some 500 dead. It is unclear whether his killing now will break the group’s momentum.”

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TRUMP CARDS

HOW CLOSE WE CAME — WaPo’s Josh Dawsey, Rosalind Helderman, Emma Brown, Jon Swaine and Jacqueline Alemany have the scoop on an explosive memo from the Trump administration that suggested the then-president should “invoke the extraordinary powers of the National Security Agency and Defense Department to sift through raw electronic communications in an attempt to show that foreign powers had intervened in the 2020 election to help Joe Biden win.”

The December 2020 memo “laid out a plan for the president to appoint three men to lead this effort. One was a lawyer attached to a military intelligence unit; another was a veteran of the military who had been let go from his National Security Council job after claiming that Trump was under attack by deep-state forces including ‘globalists’ and ‘Islamists.’ The third was a failed Republican congressional candidate, MICHAEL DEL ROSSO, who sent a copy of the memo to Sen. KEVIN CRAMER (R-N.D.), who confirmed to The Post he received the document from Del Rosso. An aide to Sen. RON JOHNSON (R-Wis.) also said his office received the document but declined to say who sent it.” ( Read the memo)

ALL POLITICS

TRUMP TARGETS SUNUNU — New Hampshire GOP Gov. CHRIS SUNUNU has found himself the latest subject of Trump’s ire, and the ex-president has told one of his former campaign aides to get Sununu out. “On the HOWIE CARR radio show Wednesday, Trump advisor COREY LEWANDOWSKI said his old boss has given him a new job: Get rid of Gov. Chris Sununu,” NH Journal’s Michael Graham writes . Lewandowski told Carr: “The president is very unhappy with the chief executive officer of the state of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu. And Sununu, in the president’s estimation, is someone who’s never been loyal to him. And the president said it would be really great if somebody would run against Chris Sununu.”

MORE CUOMO FALLOUT — ALPHONSO DAVID , the “former president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, sued the organization Thursday, contending that a pattern of racial discrimination led to his firing last year after he advised the office of then-New York Gov. ANDREW M. CUOMO on its response to sexual harassment allegations,” WaPo’s Michael Scherer reports . “He claims that board members told him that he was initially paid less because he is Black. He says he was encouraged by a board member to stop mentioning his race in public comments. He also recounts being told by a senior HRC executive that his public support for racial justice risked alienating White donors and specifically ‘White gay men.’”

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AMERICA AND THE WORLD

PUTIN’S GAMBIT — If it seems like Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN is being more stubborn than usual amid the tensions with Ukraine and its allies, there may be something to that. “Over the past several years, [Putin] has restructured his country’s economy for the specific purpose of withstanding Western financial pressure,” NYT’s Max Fisher writes . “Russia has drastically reduced its use of dollars, and therefore Washington’s leverage. It has stockpiled enormous currency reserves, and trimmed its budgets, to keep its economy and government services going even under isolation. It has reoriented trade and sought to replace Western imports.”

THE NUKE DEAL DEETS — U.S. officials expect that “a restored nuclear deal would leave Iran capable of amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb in significantly less than a year, a shorter time frame than the one that underpinned the 2015 agreement, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said,” per WSJ’s Laurence Norman . “Administration officials concluded late last year that Iran’s nuclear program had advanced too far to re-create the roughly 12-month so-called breakout period of the 2015 pact, the U.S. officials said.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

WINTER STORM WATCH — A major winter storm stretching across the U.S. is raising concerns in many states. “A long stretch of states from New Mexico to Maine remained under winter storm warnings and watches and the path of the storm stretched further from the central U.S. into more of the South and Northeast. Heavy snow was expected from the southern Rockies to northern New England, while forecasters said heavy ice buildup was likely from Texas to Pennsylvania,” AP’s Kathleen Foody and Jill Bleed write.

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PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED at an early 60th birthday celebration/Zoom fundraiser for Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) on Wednesday night, where attendees were asked to submit a song that reminded them of the congresswoman, leading to a lot of Beyoncé: first lady Jill Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), Val Demings (D-Fla.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), Al Green (D-Texas), Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), John Sarbanes (D-Md.), Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas).

MEDIA MOVE — Katy Murphy is moving up to become California editor at POLITICO. She previously has been deputy editor.

BIDEN ALUMNI — Maju Varghese has been named COO of the National Endowment for Democracy. He most recently was deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Military Office.

TRANSITIONS — Democracy for the Arab World Now is launching a new Israel and Palestine program and adding Mike Omer-Man as research director and Adam Shapiro as advocacy director. Omer-Man previously was editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine, and is a Jerusalem Post alum. Shapiro is a grassroots human rights leader and filmmaker. …

… Crawford Pierson is now congressional affairs coordinator for the Solar Energy Industries Association. She most recently was scheduler/office manager for Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.). … Brian H. Williams is now health policy fellow for Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). He is a professor of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine and Robert Wood Johnson health policy fellow at the National Academy of Medicine.