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dalton99a

(81,516 posts) Tue Jul 30, 2019, 07:32 PM Jul 2019

CNN and Jeff Zucker plot 2020 election coverage and promise things will be different

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cnn-and-jeff-zucker-plot-2020-election-coverage-and-promise-things-will-be-different/2019/07/29/6d6f59a8-b21f-11e9-951e-de024209545d_story.html

CNN and Jeff Zucker plot 2020 election coverage and promise things will be different
By Sarah Ellison July 30 at 5:00 AM

Donald Trump and Jeff Zucker in 2004. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

In 2012, when CNN was looking for a new leader, Trump tweeted, “@CNN is looking at Jeff Zucker to lead them out of the forest — Jeff would be a great choice.” After Trump launched his presidential campaign in June 2015, the two spoke multiple times a week, according to former campaign officials.

Zucker said that his own 20-year relationship with the president means that Trump believes Zucker and CNN owe him loyalty, one of the traits the president most values.

“It’s a fair criticism that we took too many of his rallies live and unedited,” Zucker said, but he also credits his relationship with Trump as providing an insight into the candidate that helped the network’s coverage.

“I think it’s one of the reasons going back — and I don’t really want to rehash, although we can talk about it — we recognized earlier than most in 2015 what his appeal would be, and [that’s] why we took him much more seriously as a candidate early on.”

“That’s an insane position,” said Tim Miller, the former spokesman for Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign and an outspoken never-Trumper. “This idea that Jeff Zucker had some kind of [idea] about Trump’s credibility that other networks did not is just not true. Trump was good TV, so they aired him.”