Memo to AT&T CEO John Stankey: Your employee Christiane Amanpour is devaluing your company’s stock.
John! Bubula! Have you lost your mind? AT&T is carrying a huge debt load and you’re still trying to chug against the wind.
- So buying DirecTV was a mistake, and it will take some doing to unload it or make it work.
But CNN is worse, as long as “Banzai” Jeff Zucker keeps sending reporters on Kamikaze missions that only end up immolating the network.
The latest of CNN’s Divine Wind crash-bangers is Christiane Amanpour. In 1983, when I was CNN’s first Special Assignments Correspondent, Amanpour was hired in Atlanta. I remember her as a smart, but sawed-off, chain-smoking, refugee/desk assistant. My view remains the same, except for the smart part.
So last week, Amanpour, the egotistical fool who works for you, went on a scripted, teleprompter-supported rant attacking Orange Man Bad.
Here’s what she said:
This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened . . . It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history, and truth.
After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.
Not only is your employee Amanpour factually wrong about Trump, but calling Kristallnacht a “shot across the bow” is like calling Hiroshima a balloon pop. That night 7,000 Jewish businesses were torched, more than 200 synagogues were obliterated, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, and another 600 or so were killed or later died in captivity.
Amanpour has not only incensed a chunk of the Jewish community, but she has also perturbed me personally, along with everyone else who likes to get the facts straight.
You know, stockholders.
The ones who will be at the meeting in Dallas next year wondering why AT&T stock is still hovering in the mid-20s, and wondering if you have departed reality for not jettisoning underperforming CNN and dear old Mother Zucker.
Look, John, Charlie Gasparino over at Fox Business reported the other day that CNN insiders are nervous. He says Jeff Bezos is interested. So sell it already!
It’s a win-win! You can start to unload the debt, and Bezos can have a new toy to go along with the Washington Post. Like bookends. Except they both lean left.
Just think of all the fun Amazon Bezos and Mother Zucker will have in each other’s company. Better still, imagine Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Anderson Cooper as Amazon employees. (During commercial breaks they could put on aprons and restock.)
Meantime, John, remember 52-cents-a-share for the stockholders will join the boys over at Elliott Management in recalling another historic event: Nacht der langen messer.