The Devastating Fall of the Anti-Trumpers

BUCK:  So Avenatti, fair to say, fallen from lib grace. I think that’s a fair point to make. That guy was on TV… The only human being I have seen on TV almost as much as Fauci at CNN was Michael Avenatti. I mean, that guy lived in the CNN greenroom, and they were always giving him a back rub on air. It was gross. It was just, “Oh, you’re a hero!”

He’s disgusting. The guy’s a slimeball. Everybody knows it. Again, our buddy Tucker used to call him “Creepy Porn Lawyer” early on before the criminal charges came out against Avenatti. And so, once again, he was astute in that observation. But Avenatti has fallen completely by the wayside, Clay, as we know. Cuomo became — not only Chris but also Andrew — big heroes of the left.

Big anti-Trumpers, completely fallen and collapsed, and now Jeff Zucker too. It’s almost like every person… I’m probably even forgetting a couple of the great heroes of anti-Trumpism from the left. I know there’s one that should come to mind right now that’s not, and people are probably yelling, “Buck, but what about…?” Text me or Google… (chuckles) Text me. Google me and I’ll… Good grief.

CLAY: What, are you an old man? You don’t even know how to communicate?

BUCK: Sorry. (laughing) That was a blooper. That was a blooper for me.

CLAY: “Pull out the phones, and the phones — send me a voicemail.”

BUCK: I meant to say Twitter. Tweet me. But here is Stelter — speaking of anti-Trumpism — over at CNN trying to make sense of what happened here and the way this all went down. Play 17.

STELTER: The Chris Cuomo effort. Cuomo was fired in December, and he is not going out quietly. He was fired and there were reports that he wasn’t gonna get paid the millions of dollars that were gonna be on the remainder of his contract. So as a source said to me earlier today, “He was trying to burn the place down.” He was going to court trying to burn the place down and claiming that he had incriminating information about Zucker and Gollust.

So if that’s the case, this is the domino effect that begins with Andrew Cuomo going down the governor’s office, and then Chris Cuomo being fired from CNN, and then Jeff Zucker losing his job at CNN. That is a remarkable domino effect, the chain of events. I think that is part of the story.

CLAY: You would have to be so dumb if you are Brian Stelter and you didn’t know this relationship was going on between Jeff Zucker and the senior VP of marketing and PR at CNN. So I think you have to consider this — and, by the way, in general, right, consenting adults should be able to do whatever consenting adults want to do, right? That’s my position.

But there are a lot of details, I think, still to come out about this relationship. If you hire your significant other and bring that person in to work with you and you don’t disclose that you are doing that, that is a direct attack about the legitimacy of your reign. But also, it’s a direct attack upon everyone else who’s not sleeping with you.

Do you think that might have some impact overall in who gets promoted at CNN? Right? So Brian Stelter is, I believe, a complete and total liar whether he’s claiming, “Hey, well, this came out because Chris Cuomo got fired and he decided he knew something.” No. Everybody in a prominent position at CNN, I believe, either knew or had strong suspicions about this relationship. I don’t think you could hide it.

There were articles… Katie Couric wrote about it in her book. There were articles about fights that they had gotten into publicly where they were yelling at each other, and it didn’t feel like a business-based spat. It felt like a lovers’ quarrel. So Stelter now — did you see this story too, Buck? — supposedly RadarOnline broke the story of this relationship, right?

Supposedly the day before the RadarOnline basically was going to break this story, Stelter went on social media and started attacking RadarOnline for not being reliable. Are you telling me that’s totally coincidental and had nothing to do with the fact that they were about to run a story attacking Jeff Zucker, his patron saint, the reason he has a show?

BUCK: So CNN for a while has been essentially a like a Mafia of beta males over there. I mean, so you’ve got Stelter and all these other —

CLAY: That’s a fantastic line.

BUCK: Why, thank you, sir.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they all owe their careers to Zucker and people like Brian? Brian Stelter’s not getting a TV show anywhere else, folks, and I don’t think Brian Stelter’s keeping his TV show in a post-Zucker era. But that’s also how he’s able to get away with doing this for so long. Now, to your point about the consenting adults, sure, that’s true. And by the way, no one’s claiming there’s any, you know, any sort of criminal impropriety here at all.

CLAY: No. I bet there’s some improprieties inside CNN that might come out as a result of all these investigations Chris Cuomo has gotten involved.

BUCK: True. But I’m just saying with Zucker right now there’s been no allegation of anything other than this is corporate civil or civil case kind of impropriety. And it’s obvious that this is what was going on there for a long time, but beyond that, CNN is so high and mighty —

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: — and sanctimonious about harassment issues and #MeToo and women in the workplace and all this stuff all the time. And the whole place is a fraud.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: And this is what I think is so important. They’re a fraud when it comes to journalism. They’re a fraud when it comes to women in the workplace and #MeToo and whatever. Brooke Baldwin. (laughing) I’m gonna say it: You remember Brooke.

CLAY: They banned me for life for saying I believe in the First Amendment and boobs.

BUCK: I know Brooke, and she’s a nice lady. I should get you two out for coffee sometime. She left because it was so much of a boys club, and I think she probably knew all about this. I’d be very curious to see if she had any thoughts about the situation at CNN now that it’s all come out.

CLAY: We should invite her on. We could get back together again, me and Brooke.

BUCK: You want a beer summit? I could arrange a Brooke and Clay beer summit’ you guys could be friends. And, by the way, I think your ban is gone, Clay, but obviously you’re a Fox talent now, but I don’t think that CNN, in the post-Zucker era — ’cause that was when Zucker was running the place.

CLAY: No you’re right. I think the ban is probably gone but I work at Fox News so I can’t go on to a competitor, obviously.

BUCK: Can I just say my essential point here was just — and just why I’m babbling about Brooke and all this stuff. Babbling Brooke. Look what I just did there. Sorry. The truth here is the whole thing…

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: I had a lot of coffee today. Black Rifle Coffee. The whole thing was a fraud, the whole thing. CNN, it’s not a journalistic enterprise, they don’t actually care about, you know, women and empowerment and me too and feminism and all that stuff. The whole thing’s just a big lib fraud of self-congratulation and overpaid babies. That’s what CNN is.

CLAY: Buck, I’ve always argued, male feminists are claiming to be male feminists because it’s the only way they think they can get girls. Right? Be very careful. If you are a woman out there and you meet a man and he’s like, “I’m such a huge feminist,” I would be very untrustworthy of that man compared to a normal dude, right? You go out on a date and you’re like, “Hey, what do you like to do?” “I’m just really into feminism.”

That dude is trying to cover something up. What I have seen time after time is the people who have the most to cover, what do they do, Buck? They try to pretend that they are the most saintly out there. They are the ones that are trying to cover up deep, dark issues. I think there’s a lot of deep, dark issues inside of CNN would be my bet.

BUCK: We will hold up the mirror to CNN, friends. We will not back away from this one because think about how much they did to undermine the duly elected president for four years and how much they were willing to show up on Trump supporters’ lawns — random people — humiliate them. It is an evil enterprise, and it needs reform at a minimum. Reform is the polite way of saying it.