Inside the Trump Gold Rush at CNN

CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said. “On MSNBC, you rarely hear from people who do support Trump. We want to be home to both those points of view.” He continued, as if rebuking a common critique of the network. “It is true some of these folks are not very good with the facts, but that’s O.K. in the sense that it’s our job then to call them out.” 

“People say all the time, ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about Trump, I’ve had too much Trump,’" Zucker said. “And yet at the end of the day, all they want to do is talk about Trump." "We’ve seen that anytime you break away from the Trump story and cover other events in this era, the audience goes away," he added. "So we know that, right now, Donald Trump dominates.”