Former CNN boss Chris Licht said he regretted doing an interview for an Atlantic magazine profile that hastened his departure from the struggling, left-leaning news channel.
“If I can say one thing to anybody, do not bring a reporter to the gym,” Licht told a Manhattan audience on Saturday — a reference to a quote in which he bragged that he was more athletic than his predecessor, former CNN chief Jeff Zucker.
In the 15,000-word profile, the then-CNN boss revealed himself to be thin-skinned, isolated and envious of Zucker, who was still popular in the eyes of top network stars.
In one particularly cringeworthy passage, Licht was quoted while he was doing squats with heavy weights at the gym, saying: “Zucker couldn’t do this s–t.”
“The Atlantic article I absolutely should not have done,” Licht said during an interview conducted by ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith at the New York Press Club’s Journalism Conference on Saturday.
He added that he initially resisted the idea of agreeing to the magazine interview but eventually relented due to his “arrogance.”
“Imagine saying yes after, by the way, saying no several times, but at the end, saying yes because you know what, when this comes out in a year, I will have saved everything,” Licht said.
“Now, I hadn’t failed at anything before. So it was I absolutely thought, you know what, it’s been a year, they’re going to be writing about ‘Wow, look at all these great things that have happened,’” Licht said of the Atlantic profile.
“So, no, I should have done that.”
Licht, whose disastrous 13-month tenure as head of CNN came to an end in June last year when he was let go by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, admitted Saturday that he failed to win “the trust of the organization,” which eventually led to his ouster.
“When you try to change something dramatically, you can’t do it alone,” Licht said.
“You’ve got to build the trust of the organization. They have to believe in you. And I did not build that trust.”
Licht said he was tapped to head CNN during a “crazy time,” though he added that he was “not letting myself off the hook.”
“I was not able to, in the time that I was there, build trust so that people would tune out the noise and sort of follow me into that,” Licht said.
When asked by Smith to “pinpoint” what led to his firing, Licht mentioned the May 2023 televised town hall with Donald Trump — during which moderator Kaitlan Collins was frequently interrupted by the now-president-elect while his supporters in the New Hampshire venue cheered his answers.
Licht on Saturday defended the decision to host a town hall with Trump. At the time, CNN staffers blasted Licht for the fiasco — accusing him of putting Collins in a “no-win situation.”
On Saturday, Licht defended the decision to stage the event.
“I still believe today it was the right thing to do,” he told Smith. Licht said his one regret was that CNN did not inform viewers that the town hall included an audience that was made up of Trump supporters and center-right voters.
“Remember, we hadn’t seen Trump for a very long time,” Licht said of the thought process that went into broadcasting the town hall.
“That was the first time he answered very tough questions in a long time. And the fact that his shtick resonated with voters in New Hampshire, that’s part of the story, but people at home had to be told that and that’s one thing I would have done differently.”
Licht said the blowback came from people who “didn’t want change” and that he reacted by “pick[ing] some fights that I shouldn’t have picked.”
“There’s some things I should — some alliances I should have built, or people I should have trusted more,” he said.
The Post has sought comment from CNN.
