Kara Swisher says she’s done with CNN. The tech journalist and podcaster told listeners of her “Pivot” show on Tuesday that she intends to end her work with the network “ASAP” after California Attorney General Rob Bonta struck a deal clearing the way for Paramount’s merger with CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
“F–k these guys!” Swisher said on the podcast, adding that she’d briefly considered staying on in some kind of licensing arrangement before deciding against it. “I don’t want to work for them. I just don’t,” she said.
The deal came together Monday, when Bonta agreed to drop his lawsuit blocking the merger. In exchange, Paramount agreed to a minimum number of annual film releases and other commitments. Bonta was one of 12 state attorneys general who had sued to stop the merger.
Swisher had already promised in June to walk away from CNN if the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal went through, calling incoming CNN boss David Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, “incompetent.” The elder Ellison, a billionaire and close ally of President Trump, bankrolled the merger.
On Tuesday’s podcast, Swisher told her co-host Scott Galloway she had “too much to do” with him to bother sticking around under the new ownership. Galloway told her not to expect much resistance if she asks out of her contract. “I think there’s a decent likelihood that when you show up to whoever it is you show up to at CNN and say, I want out of my contract, they jump up and say, ‘Congratulations, no problem,'” he said.
Swisher called the Ellisons “terrible media owners,” while saying she still holds “a lot of regard” for CNN’s current executives.
Galloway, for his part, dismissed the California-led legal challenge that had held up the merger as “sheer regulatory theater.” “Regulators started out saying this is Godzilla, it’s an existential threat to humanity and they settled by saying, we’ll make more movies about Godzilla,” he said. He argued Bonta’s motive was political. “This is Rob Bonta deciding he wants to run for governor and giving in to populist bulls–t,” Galloway said. “I don’t like the concentration of media, but the bottom line is when you do the math, and you look at antitrust law, there was no legal leg to stand on here.”
The fallout from the settlement is being watched closely inside CNN, where staffers are bracing for layoffs once the merger closes. “Bloodbath coming, including at CNN,” one TV executive said. “That’s the next big step — slashing and burning.” Employees are also watching what role, if any, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss might take at CNN as part of an Ellison-driven push to reshape coverage at the network’s sister properties.
