Tucker Carlson said on Wednesday that Jeff Zucker's relationship with an executive was just a pretext for his departure from CNN and the real reason is terrible ratings and bad actors at the network. <b><a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/12/14/geragos_current_cnn_format_not_long_for_this_world_there_is_going_to_be_a_huge_shakeup_in_next_6_weeks.html">RELATED: Mark Geragos: Current CNN Format "Not Long For This World," There Is Going To Be A Huge Shakeup In Next 6 Weeks</a></b> <blockquote>TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Jeff Zucker got fired from CNN this morning. In a statement, Zucker said that he’s been dating a colleague, didn’t disclose it, and when the network found out, they made him leave. You should know that’s not true. Everyone in the TV business had already heard about Zucker’s relationship with the head of CNN’s marketing department. Every executive in television has known for years. It wasn’t a secret. Zucker didn’t get canned for his sex life. New management wanted him out of CNN for other reasons, including bad ratings. His relationship was just a pretext. As usual with CNN, you’ve got to wade through a lot of lies to get to what actually happened. So what happens next at CNN? For starters, let’s hope they get rid of the eunuch and his weird, pop-eyed accomplice. The two have made a career of trying to kill free speech in this country. No news organization should ever employ people like that. It’s disgraceful. As for who replaces Jeff Zucker, we hope it’s someone better. CNN is poison. We want the channel to improve. With Zucker gone, it’s at least theoretically possible that could happen. We didn’t like Jeff Zucker. We’ve said so clearly for a long time. We attacked Zucker’s programming decisions. We slammed his political agenda. We called him names. We meant every word of it. Still, on this day that we should be celebrating Jeff Zucker’s departure, we’re not. Why is that? Because we see a pattern here. There are an awful lot of contemptible leaders in corporate America, maybe most of them. But only a certain kind of CEO ever gets fired. It’s not the weak ones. The guys who do what they’re told, issue the cringy statements, and let the HR department run everything tend to keep their jobs till retirement. People like that just want to get it over with, and cash out. They won’t take risks. They’d don’t dare to build anything new. They’re just caretakers. If their dignity is the price of job security, they’re happy to pay it. More than at any time in our history, America is run by people like this. It’s only the strong who are punished. Strong leaders tend to be abrasive. They’re arrogant. Sometimes they’re what we now call “abusive.” They ignore convention. They say outrageous things. They don’t blend in with groups. Often, they alienate the more sensitive types around them. They don’t have material instincts. A lot of modern people are put off by strong leaders. But you need them. Creative masculine energy is the essential quality in any civilization. It’s how we got civilization in the first place. But increasingly, boisterous masculinity is systematically suppressed to make way for a timid caretaker class, people who think the whole point of society is to get to zero covid infections, or eliminate all traffic deaths. Those sound like virtuous goals, but in fact they’re signifiers of decline. Not dying can never be the whole point. If it is, you’re already dead. Our current leaders are fearful because they’re old. But the opposite is also true. They kept power into their 80s because they put safety first — over creativity, courage and leadership. Nancy Pelosi never built anything. Neither has Joe Biden or Mitch McConnell. They’re not capable of it. At best, they can preserve what others have made, not that they’ve even bothered to try. Jeff Zucker, whatever else we’ve said about him, tried to do something new. We hated what he did. We didn’t share Jeff Zucker’s vision. We found it repugnant and destructive. But at least he had a vision. Too few still do. </blockquote>