Fox News star Greg Gutfeld gleefully gloated over the sudden collapse of CNN’s much-hyped streaming service on Thursday, taking the opportunity to make several jokes at the expense of his former longtime colleague Chris Wallace.
After the network devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to CNN+ and made a number of splashy hires to staff it up, incoming network CEO Chris Licht informed the platform’s employees on Thursday that the subscription service would be shutting down just a month after its rocky launch.
Addressing staffers, Licht conceded it was a “uniquely shitty situation” following the merger of Discovery with CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia. Discovery’s streaming president J.B. Perrette added that “some of this was avoidable” but the “prior leadership decided to just keep going” with the planned March launch.
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During Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News gabfest The Five, meanwhile, Gutfeld saw an opening to kick some dirt on Wallace, who exited in December for a CNN+ gig after 18 years at Fox News.
“The Democratic bench is thinner than Chris Wallace’s demo reel from CNN+,” Gutfeld snarked during the program’s first segment. “I just needed to get that in there.”
He wasn’t close to done, something he made sure to remind viewers throughout the hour.
“BLM has done to Black people what Chris Wallace did to CNN+: entice them with a promise and then ditch them on the side of the road,” he quipped during the next segment. “I'm going to do this every segment, so get used to it!”
During a later discussion about former President Barack Obama's warning about disinformation on social media, the Gutfeld! host took two additional swipes at the former Fox News Sunday moderator.
“Well, to quote Chris Wallace,” he said to giggles from his co-hosts: “I don’t think the credibility of this initiative is sustainable.”
A minute later, he ended his rant about the need for apolitical “free speech absolutists” to moderate Twitter with another dig at the veteran newsman.
“Look for independent voices with free time, so I guess that eliminates Chris Wallace,” Gutfeld smugly joked, prompting co-host Jeanine Pirro to chortle in approval.
The Fox News jester eventually emptied out his notebook of Wallace jokes towards the end of the show.
“A lot of these solutions coming from the left are unreliable, whether it’s solar panels or windmills,” he cracked. “I mean, look at CNN+ and how much money they invested in wind power by hiring Chris Wallace.”
Unsurprisingly, Gutfeld made it known that he was not a big fan of Wallace even while the award-winning journalist was at Fox. After Wallace heaped praise on President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech last year, Gutfeld roundly mocked the anchor with an over-the-top performance.
