Buck Sexton worked as a contributor at CNN from 2014 until 2016. He believes he could never be allowed on-air at the network in a similar capacity today due to its shift away from its strictly news-gathering roots.
While appearing with Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM program, Sexton discussed his tenure at the network, noting he could feel a potential shift in coverage brewing before he exited.
“This is when they used to have conservatives on the payroll,” he said with a smile. “I was there. Kayleigh McEnany was there. There was a few of us. And in the Trump era, that just became unacceptable. They’re a network that got so ideologically crazed that they were having to have people on that were fakes for the other side.”
Buck Sexton claimed the network only allowed conservatives on the network who couldn’t explain Trump’s positions, to then not allowing those with conservative beliefs on at all. Kelly agreed, before Sexton continued his criticism of the network.
“The notion of CNN as a ‘news channel’ has been laughable for a long time. It’s obviously left of center, it’s Democrat-aligned, and it’s effectively DNC TV. It’s mostly watched in airports. In terms of why their audience is so down, they put their audience through quite a bit of whiplash. They seemed like they were gonna be open to more broader ideological points of view,” Sexton argued before noting that things like backlash over the Trump Town Hall last year provided things hadn’t changed in the post-Jeff Zucker era of the network’s history.
