CNN President Jeff Zucker said he is “still very interested in politics” and would consider an eventual run for office, according to a Monday interview with CNN analyst David Axelrod, the former chief strategist for former President Barack Obama’s campaigns, who also served as a senior Obama administration advisor.
“I still harbor somewhere in my gut that I’m still very interested in politics,” Zucker told Axelrod, host of The Axe Files podcast. “It’s something I would consider,” he continued. The executive was responding to Axelrod’s question about where the CNN chief sees himself in five years. “You turned down the opportunity to work for Al Gore in 2000. You’ve talked in the past about possibly running for office,” Axelrod said.
The two also discussed President Donald Trump’s verbal attacks on CNN reporters and accusing the cable news channel of generating “fake news.”
Since Zucker and Trump were business partners while Zucker was the president of NBC and Trump was filming The Apprentice, “He thought CNN should give him a pass because we were friends,” Zucker said. “He thought that CNN should be like Fox News and just give him glowing coverage all the time. So, I think he does hold that against me and CNN.”