Chris Cuomo Calls Out Ex-Employer CNN Amid Feud With Trump: ‘Trying Too Hard to Compete with These Pod Bros’
Chris Cuomo accused his former network CNN of being in full “MAGA mode” amid their feud with President Donald Trump over a report on an intelligence assessment downplaying the effectiveness of the strikes he ordered on Iranian nuclear sites last weekend.
President Donald Trump and officials in his administration have lashed out at both CNN and The New York Times over reports based on a leaked intelligence assessment that concluded the strikes on Iran likely set back their nuclear programs by months, rather than the years that officials were touting.
Trump has called the reporting “fake news,” while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a Thursday press conference that Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated” and quick initial intelligence reports are “almost always wrong, almost always incomplete.”
On NewsNation’s CUOMO Wednesday evening, Bill O’Reilly joined Cuomo and lit up CNN for its reporting, saying they purposefully tried to “diminish” the success of Trump’s strikes, something Cuomo agreed with.
“There’s nobody who went under the mountain to see. The Iranians can’t even do that because the mountain may collapse on them. There’s absolutely no primary source reporting on the damage that the American planes caused. None. So you got four anonymous people saying, ‘Well, I might have heard this, I might have heard that,'” O’Reilly said, going on to explain he never uses anonymous sources unless absolutely necessary.
The former Fox News host chalked up the report from CNN as part of a larger anti-Trump agenda and argued it showed that the media industry is at its “lowest.” CNN has defended its reporting.
“It’s absurd. No competent journalistic editor would have printed that article, but since CNN is in business to make Trump look bad, as you said, every moment of every day, they throw it out there, but I think we all know that the journalism industry in America and the world is at the lowest point in the history of that industry,” he said.
Cuomo agreed on the overall media, saying the industry is trying too hard to “compete with pod bros.”
“I think that it’s trying too hard to compete with these pod bros and people who sell hysteria for profit. And we should just stick to what we do best, because in truth, podcasts have their place. Don’t get me wrong. I love having one, but they don’t have any of the assets or capabilities of getting things right or reporting or investigating the way real news agencies do. We just too often get caught up in the propaganda game,” he said.
Cuomo did offer praise to his former employer — he was fired by CNN in 2021 — and pushed back on multiple points from O’Reilly, including the use of anonymous sources and Trump’s part in everything.
“Trump asked for it by saying everything was obliterated, so he asks for the criticism, because he doesn’t know that either. But anonymous sources matter, Bill. If it weren’t for anonymous sources, in your career and mine, very often you wouldn’t know anything about what’s happening in the halls of power, because people aren’t going to put their name to things, because they get fired. So anonymous sources have their place, you just got to get it right,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo called his former network “great,” but argued they are in “MAGA mode.”
“Even though I got fired, I have a lot of respect for the men and women who are doing the job there, and I miss a lot them. And I think it’s a great place. But when they’re wrong, they’re wrong. When they do things they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t,” he said. “I don’t blame the whole place. You’ve got to look at the specific platform. But they see what’s happening on the left. You see that they’re in MAGA mode. And they are all in on the mirror image of MAGA. That’s what’s going on there now. There are no more Democrats. There are more Republicans. There’s MAGA, and now you have whatever they call the new lefty MAGA.”
Watch above via NewsNation.
