CNN Columnist Abruptly Quits CNN in Anti-Trump Meltdown

Kara Swisher told listeners she wants out of her CNN contract after a legal settlement cleared the last major hurdle for Paramount Skydance’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, the network’s parent. She has been a CNN contributor since 2023 and hosted the series “Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever.”

The deal, led by David Ellison and valued around $111 billion, was struck in February, cleared by the Justice Department in June, and unblocked on September 21 when California Attorney General Rob Bonta, other state attorneys general, and the Writers Guild of America settled their challenges. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has said the closing is expected in early October.

Swisher first promised to walk if the Ellisons took control. “I’m walking right out of there the day they get there. I’m walking, and there’s no way I’m working for these terrible people,” she said last December.

After the Justice Department signed off in June, she told co-host Scott Galloway on the “Pivot” podcast, “With the CNN thing, well you know my feelings on that. I’m leaving as soon as I can.” She added, “I don’t want to work for the Ellisons, and I don’t want to work for their handpicked minions because I think they’re incompetent.”

“I just don’t see any way that these people make good decisions and I don’t trust them,” she said. “That’s it. I don’t want to work for tech people.”

On this week’s podcast she said she had spent the day reading the contract and asked her agent to get her released. The deal runs to December 31. “It ends December 31, so it’s only a few months, right? I just can’t.”

She said she briefly considered a licensing workaround. Then she dropped it. “I thought like I was trying to figure out ways I could work with them in some like licensing way. But then I thought, f*** these guys! I don’t want to work for them. I just don’t.”

Swisher separated her view of current CNN managers from her view of the incoming owners. “I have a lot of regard for the executives there now,” she said, naming CEO Mark Thompson among people she liked working with.

She also said she has other platforms that pay more and reach a larger audience. “I think they are terrible media owners. I would rather work for Rupert Murdoch. I can’t leave yet, but I will leave as soon as I can.”

The remarks landed as a public break with a network she had used as a television home, timed to a merger she has opposed for months.