Chris Licht, the former chief executive of CNN, said he “should not have” participated in the voluminous Atlantic profile that cost him his job, blaming the decision on his own “arrogance.”
“I hadn’t failed at anything before,” Licht over the weekend, according to the New York Post. “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.’ So, no, I should have done that.”
Speaking to ESPN star Stephen A. Smith at a New York Press Club event on Saturday, Licht said he figured the profile would come out after he had “saved everything” at the network. It was only after a year dealing with hit after hit—the ill-fated morning show, the sacking of Don Lemon, the Donald Trump town hall—did he realize he may have made a mistake.
ADVERTISEMENT
The profile came out on June 2, 2023, and Licht was fired five days later.
Licht admitted he never managed to establish trust with the network’s staff during the “crazy time” he was tapped to lead CNN, prompting his various attempts at reinvigorating the network to fail.
“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, according to the Post.
Licht also defended CNN’s widely panned May 2023 town hall with Trump, who spent much of the time complaining and attacking anchor Kaitlan Collins. Licht said the town hall was “the first time [Trump] answered very tough questions in a long time,” making the staging “the right thing to do.”
Still, he admitted navigating the criticism he got both within and outside the network was challenging, prompting him to react poorly.
“There’s some things I should—some alliances I should have built, or people I should have trusted more,” he said.
Licht did manage to have a sense of humor about the ordeal, however.
“If I can say one thing to anybody, do not bring a reporter to the gym,” he quipped to the audience, referencing a scene in the 15,000-word scathing piece that cost him his job.
