Leave it to Jeff Zucker to shamelessly reach into CNN’s treat drawer and throw Donald Trump another bone.
Zucker, who as an NBC executive was Trump’s biggest champion – and upped the ante (if that was possible) with CNN’s slavishly adoring coverage – has really done it this time by hiring Corey Lewandowski as a contributor.
Trump has got to be feeling guilty for throwing Lewandowski under the bus. After all, “I stick up for people and I don’t want to ruin somebody’s life”, he said in March when Lewandowski was under siege. Lewandowski was indefatigably loyal and has four kids to feed. So good thing that when Trump finally was compelled to put Lewandowski on the bread line that his dear friend Zucker could be there with a soft landing.
As Jeff himself could attest by his own career trajectory, CNN has long been a catchment for the displaced and fired. Just ask Chris Cuomo. But how cynical do you have to get before you hire someone like Lewandowski, an avowed enemy of (and alleged assailant of) reporters? A keeper of blacklists who bullied women journalists when he wasn’t (allegedly) drunk-dialing them? After Lewandowski’s shameful behavior towards the press, should he now be rewarded with a media job?
We can just imagine Trump getting on the phone with Zucker (after all, Trump claims that Zucker personally calls and books him for all his CNN appearances) and dialing in a favor. “Jeff, could you please hire my guy? He’s AMAZING. I had to let him go. He was rude to Ivanka.”
And Zucker, of course, obliges. Quid pro quo.
Zucker already pulled a “hire a friend” move when he gave an unemployed, useless rich person, David Gregory, a CNN contributor role. And we thought that was Zucker’s worst contribution to the American discourse since “Fear Factor”. Apparently not.
Couldn’t Trump have instead called his friend Jeffrey Epstein and asked him to hire Mr. Lewandowski to help maintain the grounds at “Orgy Island”? Or perhaps he could have commanded Chris Christie to hire him as a sort of Golan Cipel-type head of security?
So now Lewandowski will add to CNN’s collection of whack jobs, sitting there on set as Don Lemon speculates whether the Malaysian jet flew into a black hole. God bless Jeff Zucker – cynicism survives and thrives.