Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan began a column in October 2016 – a month before the Presidential Election with the question:
“Looking for someone specific to hold responsible for the improbable rise of Donald Trump?”
Then she continued: “You could do worse than to take a hard look at Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide.”
Here’s her argument:
“It was Zucker, after all, who as the new head of NBC Entertainment gave Trump his start in reality TV with The Apprentice and then milked the real estate developer’s uncanny knack for success for all it was worth in ratings and profits.
“The show was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle,” Sullivan said, quoting the book Trump Revealed, written by Washington Post journalists Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher.
The program was a big success, paying Trump tens of millions of dollars. In an April 2016 interview, Trump said he earned about $200 million over 14 seasons from the program.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/28/us/donald-trump-taxes-apprentice.html
Zucker and NBC added a sequel, Celebrity Apprentice, which further established Trump as a tremendous success in business when the reality was something else.
Let’s not forget the role of Mark Burnett, producer of The Apprentice, in this fraud.
SEE MARK BURNETT
The success of The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice made Zucker himself a star in the television industry. And as Sullivan pointed out, Zucker kept coming up with ways to make money off the Trump name.
“When the reality-TV star was preparing to marry Melania Knauss in 2005, Zucker wanted to broadcast the wedding live.
Trump declined.
There is actually a limit to Trump’s greed and self-aggrandizing. Maybe.
“I was actually surprised that Jeff Zucker didn’t make me do it,” said Trump. “They could’ve done very well on that wedding. I could’ve done very well.
“Turning down millions of dollars to be televised was probably a stupid thing.”
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a19014/trump-regrets-not-televising-wedding/
The Hollywood Reporter reported that it was Melania who rejected Zucker’s proposition.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/trumps-wedding-melania-bill-hill-880088/
The Trump-Zucker partnership, as it turned out, resulted in Zucker becoming head of CNN as Trump was running for president.
“But make no mistake,” Sullivan said, “There would be no Trump-the-politician without Trump-the-TV-star. One begot the other.”
Zucker was president of CNN Worldwide when Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.
It was Zucker, who, according to Sullivan, “who gave Trump astonishing amounts of free exposure in the Republican presidential primary on the cable network, continually blasting out his speeches and rallies — often unfiltered and without critical fact-checking.”
CNN was hardly the only network doing this, Sullivan pointed out. Fox became a megaphone for Trump. But so too did the rest of the news media.
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS, famously said about promoting Trump.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464/
Monnves was fired as chair of CBS In September 2018 after a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct.
Zucker resigned as president of CNN after admitted to a consensual sexual relationship with a close associate.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/media/jeff-zucker-cnn/index.html
I’m far more concerned with the fact that Zucker screwed millions of American voters.
