Don Lemon and Jeff Zucker live it up as former colleagues suffer at CNN
Who needs CNN anyway?
Ousted CNN heavyweights Don Lemon, Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust seem to be having a positively charming summer — while the folks who actually kept their jobs at the network, it seems, remain miserable.
Page Six reported that the longtime pals — all of whom have been unceremoniously booted from CNN — were recently staying together during a visit to Italy for power agent Jay Sures’ wedding.
Now they’re back stateside, but we hear they’re still palling around in a most leisurely fashion.
We’re told Zucker, Lemon and Gollust were all dining together — along with Lemon’s fiance, Tim Malone — at Kissaki in Water Mill, NY, on Thursday night.
An onlooker told us they were sitting center stage outdoors at the Hamptons restaurant with a larger group of 10.
“They were laughing, and having a great time,” the spy said.
(Former PR chief Gollust and network head Zucker both had to resign in 2022 because they didn’t report their romantic relationship, per company policy, and former star anchor Lemon was stunningly canned in April after a rocky run with Zucker’s successor, Chris Licht.)
Meanwhile, their old co-workers aren’t as cheerful, we hear. Sources told us CNN isn’t digging itself out of the “giant mess” from the Licht era — which came to a sudden end last month — and it’s “very grim.”
“No one is happy. No one knows what’s going on,” an insider said.
CNN’s new primetime star Kaitlan Collins has been described by insiders as a “sacrificial lamb,” who has been made the face of the post-Licht period but will never be able to compete with MSNBC and Fox News.
“Nobody’s going to be the savior for them,” said an insider. “They forced [Collins] to [host the disastrous Donald Trump] town hall and now she has this show. They have no idea what they’re doing,” the insider said.
Others at the network are applauding Collins’ performance and claim her numbers are “very strong,” since she’s been in her primetime slot for the six last weeks.
CNN’s senior political anchor Jake Tapper painted a rosier picture of the struggling network. In a recent interview with podcaster Kara Swisher, he described things as “really good right now” and said morale “hasn’t been better in years,” since the network fired Licht after a year of bouncing from crisis to crisis.
He also claimed CNN was on track to being “the only nonpartisan, non-ideological 24-hour cable news network” while defending the channel’s decision to air Trump’s town hall.
Another insider agreed with Tapper’s assessment, but acknowledged Licht’s exit and said, “You can’t turn around morale in five weeks, but I find more people agree with Jake.”
“People are happy overall,” they claim.
A rep for CNN did not get back to us.
