Podcaster and CNN contributor Kara Swisher isn’t mincing words about her feelings in the wake of Paramount’s settlement with California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“F–k these guys!” she said on the Tuesday episode of her “Pivot” podcast, adding that she plans to end her work with CNN as soon as possible.
The exclamation came a day after Bonta agreed to drop his suit blocking Paramount’s merger with CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, with Paramount agreeing to a minimum number of annual film releases, among other steps.
“It’s only a few months, right?” Swisher said, looking to the prospect of Paramount CEO David Ellison beginning his reign at CNN.
“I’m just — I just can’t. I just, 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–k these guys! I don’t want to work for them. I just don’t,” she continued.
“I got too much to do with you, Scott Galloway,” she added, addressing her contributor on her popular podcast.
He offered Swisher a testing rejoinder, saying: “Kara, let me give you a little insight scoop here.
“I think there’s a decent likelihood that when you show up to whoever it is you show up to at CNN and say, I want out of my contract, they jump up and say, ‘Congratulations, no problem.’”
Swisher vowed in June to exit CNN if the Paramount-WBD merger went through, calling Ellison and his dad, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, “incompetent.” Ellison père, a close ally of President Trump’s, provided financial backing for the merger.
Swisher’s Tuesday tirade came as fears are growing within CNN that Paramount will implement sweeping layoffs once the merger is complete, as The Post reported.
“Bloodbath coming, including at CNN,” a TV exec said. “That’s the next big step — slashing and burning.”
Left-leaning staffers at the cable news network are also wary of CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who’s shaken up the Tiffany Network under an Ellison mandate to bring balance to the outlet. Her possible role at CNN remains to be seen.
Swisher, a longtime journo known for her sharp takes on Elon Musk and other tech and media figures, renewed her criticism of the Ellisons on Tuesday, saying, “I think they are terrible media owners.”
She noted she has “a lot of regard for the executives there now,” though.
For his part, Galloway laid into the case from Bonta and 11 other state AGs, calling it “sheer regulatory theater.”
“Regulators started out saying this is Godzilla, it’s an existential threat to humanity and they settled by saying, we’ll make more movies about Godzilla,” he fumed.
“This is total weak sauce. This is Rob Bonta deciding he wants to run for governor and giving in to populist bulls–t. I don’t like the concentration of media, but the bottom line is when you do the math, and you look at antitrust law, there was no legal leg to stand on here.”
