Feel-Good Story: After Laying Off 200, CNN Set to Give Jennings Big Raise – Report

With President Donald Trump’s second term in office upending the political and media worlds, even CNN might be seeing the light.

The notoriously liberal network — which spent Trump’s first term shilling for every left-wing lunatic that would grace its sets — is already taking a different direction under CEO Mark Thompson.

And amid widely publicized layoffs after the November election, its best-known conservative voice is reportedly getting a big raise.

CNN to hand pro-Trump pundit Scott Jennings big pay raise as part of new deal: report https://t.co/dztNx0fjtt pic.twitter.com/Jzfwtp9rBq

— New York Post (@nypost) March 7, 2025

Former CNN media reporter and liberal hack Oliver Darcy reported in his Status News media newsletter that Jennings is in line for a “lucrative new deal.”

While the details were unavailable — and Status News is behind a paywall — the report alone that CNN is willing to pay out big money for a conservative figure marks a huge shift in the media landscape.

CNN cemented its liberal reputation during Trump’s first term with the carnival-barking grandstanding of then-White House correspondent Jim Acosta and its constant flogging of the “Russia collusion” hoax.

But Acosta left the network in January after Thompson demoted him from a mid-morning anchor slot to a two-hour program that started at midnight.

“Russia collusion” and other supposed Trump outrages are long past their shelf life.

It just might be that CNN understands it needs to change course.

It still competes with the left-wingers at MSNBC with shows like “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” where Jennings schools both the host and her guests on a regular basis.

Check out this exchange from Thursday, when Jennings tangled with Maryland Democratic Rep. Marilyn Strickland over the screamingly stupid “Choose Your Fighter” video Democrats published on social media featuring liberal darlings like Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York:

This might be the best CNN Scott Jennings clip yet.

“I am not accustomed to helping your party do anything. But let me give you some advice. This was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. And if you read the comments today, lord have mercy.” pic.twitter.com/AkRKTgPNO2

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) March 7, 2025

(Jennings deserves a raise just for putting up with that kind of inanity on a regular basis.)

But the network itself has been forced to report that the Trump 2.0 era is not the first Trump term — and, after four years of watching the disastrous Joe Biden presidency and Democrats’ attempts to defend it, the country is different, too.

So, with Jennings reportedly in line for a big salary bump, it just might be possible that the executives at CNN have realized that its business model of alienating the sane half of America while deliberately courting the country’s liberals with ludicrously ignorant, one-sided programming is what got it into the financial mess it’s in.

It’s a financial mess that forced the layoffs of about 200 employees, according to Newsweek.

It just might be possible that CNN suits understand that what worked to its short-term gain in the first Trump administration isn’t going to work in a second, when the American public has had years to digest the truth about the president and his political opponents.

It just might be possible that even CNN executives can see the light — which would be the feel-good story of the year for the institution formerly known as “journalism” in this country.

They just might need Scott Jennings to explain it for them.

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