CNN President Jeff Zucker and other employees have been caught on tape comparing President Trump’s lack of concession to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 3000 innocent Americans. The leaked CNN internal audio calls were covertly recorded by Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe over the course of two months, and also include various efforts by CNN to cover up President Trump’s contested election claims.
O’Keefe introduced the first of many videos he plans to release, stating, “CNN says on Jeff Zucker’s 9AM editorial conference call how ‘they,’ the Democratic Party, powerful interest groups may determine how CNN will cover Trump not conceding the Presidential election.”
The leaked call, which occureed on November 10th, 2020 begins with CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel, who said, “I just want to underscore something that Michael said earlier about the transition and Trump because I’ve been talking to a lot of people this morning on both sides. And I just keep hearing the same thing both from Republicans who have not come out to congratulate Biden, but also to those who have and the Democrats and that is that we have to be, you know, news organizations have to be very careful and very responsible about not giving Trump too much of a platform on his not conceding because they feel the transition can go forward.”
Gangel elaborated, “And you know, other than the national security briefings, which are critical to start now, they just don’t want us to exaggerate that Trump isn’t leaving office, and I’m going to have a lot of specific reporting on that later today but just big picture wanted to underscore what Michael had said.”
CNN President Jeff Zucker chimed in, “Yep. Agreed.”
CNN Field Producer Stephanie Becker added, “On the issue of why it’s important to get the transition going right, the 9/11 report talks about one of the problems was that the trouble that was brewing that lost during the transition. So if you want a good, concrete example of what happens when you don’t have a good transition, well, look at the twin towers.”
Zucker responded, saying, “Yeah. So, I think that’s an important point. I think it was just a little bit yesterday in terms of national security. I think it’s really important to raise again. I would, I would encourage folks to think about that 9/11 Commission report and the lack of transition.”
O’Keefe released two additional recordings this evening including one where CNN President Jeff Zucker was caught on tape claiming that President Trump’s actions before the election were due to him being ‘erratic,’ ‘sick,’ and ‘on steroids.’
O’Keefe released another tape this evening where senior executives at CNN were caught on tape claiming that Fox News has “naked racism” and a “white supremacy hour,” referring to Tucker Carlson’s nightly show.
In a leaked audio call from September 8th, 2020, CNN Digital VP of Global Programming Marcus Mabry states, “Yeah, I was just going to say, if you’re going to talk about the story, I think it’s unavoidable that you have to talk about the naked racism of Tucker Carlson. Because that’s really what drove this anti-diversity push, you know, Trump watches Tucker Carlson’s show and then reacts. And just as sort of the white supremacy hour they have on Fox News every night, I think it’s the — You can’t disconnect the two.”
In a call a few weeks later on September 30th, 2020 CNN President Jeff Zucker claims, “what Donald Trump did last night for anybody who watches Fox News, he (Trump) was just airing all of the grievances he hears on Fox News every night, and that’s all he did.”
O’Keefe stated on Twitter that the calls Project Veritas released today are just the tip of the iceberg, and has promised to release more internal CNN staff calls every day this month “like a December advent calendar.”
Earlier today, O’Keefe called into the morning CNN editorial conference call and confronted Zucker on the recorded phone calls.
“Hey Jeff Zucker, you there?” O’Keefe asked. “Hey, this is James O’Keefe, we’ve been listening to your CNN calls for basically two months and recording everything. Just wanted to ask you some questions if you have a minute. Do you still feel you’re the most trusted name in news, because I have to say, from what I’ve been hearing on these phone calls I don’t know about that. We got a lot of recordings that indicate you’re not really that independent of a journalist.”
Zucker, who sounded surprised by O’Keefe’s presence in CNN’s internal staff call, retorted, “Ok. Um. Thank you for uh, thank you for uh, your comments, um. So everybody in light of that, I think what we’ll do is we’ll, we’ll set up uh, a new system, and we’ll uh, we’ll be back with you. We’ll do the rest of the call uh, a little bit later.”
O’Keefe responded, “We’re going to release those recordings today at 7:00, so stay tuned, it’s gonna be fun.”
Zucker quickly added, “Thank you everybody, have a good day, buh-bye,” before hanging up the call.
In a response to O’Keefe’s livestream, CNN’s PR divison added that legal experts say Project Veritas’ actions may be a felony, and that they referred him to law enforcement for further investigation.
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