On Wednesday, CNN’s Grand Poobah Jeff Zucker was fired over a secret adulterous affair he carried on with a subordinate but that everyone knew about (It’s Always an Open Secret in the Media). The relationship began 25 years ago but changed due to COVID (CNN’s Jeff Zucker Resigns After Revelations of an Inappropriate Workplace Relationship), or so we’re told without any real insight into what that might mean in terrestrial terms.

For reasons that are unclear to me, WarnerMedia dispatched its CEO Jason Kilar to try to smooth the ruffled feathers and unwind the twisted knickers of the collection of incompetents, misfits, perverts, and abject losers that CNN employs as its public face. In my view, WarnerMedia should have struck while the iron was hot and sent most of their “talent” to the unemployment line along with Zucker rather than paying their salaries listening to them snivel, but that’s just me. During this corporate-sponsored crying jag, Jake Tapper may have cut to the bottom line issue.

“Jason, if you could address the perception that Chris Cuomo gets fired by CNN, Chris Cuomo hires a high-powered lawyer who has a scorched-earth policy, who then makes it very clear to the world that unless Jeff gives Chris Cuomo his money, they’re going to blow the place up. Stuff starts getting leaked to gossip websites about Jeff and Allison… and then weeks later, Jeff comes forward, discloses this and resigns—not willingly. An outside observer might say, ‘Wow, it looks like Chris Cuomo succeeded. He threatened, Jeff said we don’t negotiate with terrorists, and he blew the place up.’ How do we get past that perception, that this is the bad guy winning?”

Maybe you don’t.

Chris Cuomo isn’t likely to get much more than half of the $18 million he’s seeking as a settlement in his feud with CNN now that Jeff Zucker has resigned, The Post has learned.

Zucker fell on his sword in an effort to keep a possible Cuomo lawsuit against CNN from seeing the light of day, sources told The Post. The ex-CNN chief was named multiple times in a draft of a suit, which hasn’t been filed, sources said.

Zucker’s resignation came as part of an agreement hammered out with AT&T chief John Stankey, sources say. Under the agreement, Zucker would leave CNN without a fight and Stankey would settle with Cuomo, the sources said.

That way, Cuomo’s potentially damaging additional accusations about Zucker would be kept from the public, these sources say.

Can I just say that “Stankey” might be the best name ever for a Fortune 500 CEO?

While Zucker paid the price stepping down as top dog of a global television network, he did so with the agreement that he would keep a piece of his privacy for leaving quickly and without a fight, sources said.

“Jeff cut a deal to say ‘I’ll leave, and you settle with Cuomo,’” a source told The Post. “He thought AT&T would fight a lawsuit and it would go public otherwise.” If Cuomo filed his lawsuit and AT&T fought it, then potentially damaging information about Zucker could come out, too, the sources said.

Zucker stated he resigned because he was involved romantically with colleague Allison Gollust but failed to disclose the relationship. Cuomo, in a draft of a suit that hasn’t been filed, claims Zucker’s misdeeds go beyond that, The Post has reported.

On the whole, though, the “Chris Cuomo pulling the temple down” narrative is just too pat. One can’t shake the feeling that there is something much more significant that does not involve Cuomo hanging out there. Moreover, the “I didn’t tell them about my mistress of a quarter-century” excuse sounds exceedingly lame given all the facts and circumstances around the two lovebirds:

But sources who worked closely with Zucker and Gollust dating back to their days at The Today Show in the mid-Nineties dispute their statements in the memo. In reality, these sources tell Rolling Stone, Zucker became romantically entangled with Gollust back in 1996, when she was a trainee in NBC’s corporate communications group and he was the married executive producer of The Today Show. “It was the worst-kept secret, but Jeff was seen as untouchable,” says one insider. “And their statements [in the memo] are total bullshit.”

From the way it sounds, Zucker’s strategy might have been foreseen by Winston Churchill when he said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

IANAL, but it doesn’t seem to me that Zucker stepping down does anything to deter Cuomo from fighting for the $18 million he believes is owed to him or from him trying to burn CNN to the ground while collecting, particularly after the bashing his former colleagues gave him in the meeting with WarnerMedia’s Kilar described above. It would seem to me that whatever misdeeds perpetrated by Zucker as head of CNN remain subject to litigation, no matter Zucker’s employment status. In fact, it is hard to imagine any information that was worth $9 million, and Jeff Zucker’s head in a tasteful wicker basket that would not be worth $18 million and Zucker’s head.

On the other hand, maybe Chris Cuomo has stuff he doesn’t want to be aired out, and he’ll decide half-a-loaf is better than mutually assured destruction.

Re: Alisyn Camerota's comments about Jeff Zucker…

Never forget the incredibly awkward New Day send-off for Chris Cuomo where the pair held hands nonstop on top of Camerota's bare legs while Cuomo's wife sat just feet away pic.twitter.com/ivjkEqnRIN

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) February 3, 2022