Jeffrey A. Zucker, the president of CNN, has been at the center of a media firestorm since President Trump started
singling out the cable network as the country’s leading distributor of that favorite Trump phrase “fake news.”
On Thursday — an hour before Mr. Trump repeated his attacks at a feisty White House news conference — Mr. Zucker divulged
that he and the president had not spoken since the final weeks of last year.
“That,” Mr. Zucker replied, “was not a good conversation.”
Over a filet mignon and Diet Coke in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Zucker, who helped introduce Mr. Trump to the masses when he bought “The Apprentice” for NBC, said
that the president’s relentless criticism had been worrying enough that he commissioned a survey of public attitudes about CNN’s reputation.
“I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right,” Mr. Trump told
CNN’s White House reporter, Jim Acosta, at the news conference on Thursday