President Donald Trump's staffers and aides may find a chilly reception at news networks once they leave the administration.
The networks always restock their rotating cast of talking heads with outgoing White House staffers and administration officials, but former Trump aides may not be welcome anywhere but Fox News or right-wing outlets like Newsmax or One America News Network, reported The Daily Beast.
“Most of us probably are hoping that we will be seeing very little of these people — unless they are willing to be more honest,” said one well-placed CNN insider. “The ones that are still out there who are well-known creeps like Jason Miller and Boris Epshteyn — nobody is going to be hiring these people.”
CNN has welcomed the president's former campaign staffers from 2016, including Miller -- who was let go after former campaign staffer A.J. Delgado says he secretly slipped her an abortion pill after getting her pregnant -- but that might change after four years of Trump in office.
CNN chief Jeff Zucker has been personally offended by the president and his allies' attacks on the network, which has recently taken to fact-checking Trump's lies in real time, and insiders say employees would revolt if CNN hired any White House staffers such as Kayleigh McEnany or Hogan Gidley.
MSNBC is similarly unlikely to welcome Trump loyalists to the liberal-leaning network, although association with the administration wouldn't be an automatic deal-breaker.
“If you’re a person who was a career government official who happened to serve the Trump administration—somebody like Mark Esper or Elliott Abrams — we might have them on,” said one MSNBC insider. “But it’s likely that if Kayleigh McEnany has a book she’s selling, she will definitely be blacklisted. The same goes for someone like Hogan Gidley.”
Trump insiders are already trying to land post-presidency gigs, even as they help the president push "voter fraud" claims seemingly aimed at holding onto the White House, one agent told The Daily Beast.
But ultimately the temptation to keep the Trump gravy train rolling might be too much for media organizations, who have profited from the president's frenzied news cycles.
“I won’t be surprised if some of the folks who were most reviled by mainstream media, Democrats, the resistance, etc., find pretty good jobs when this is over—in the media and in Washington—because ultimately politics is transactional,” said one CNN insider, “and the impulse to punish people leaving the Trump administration will be overshadowed by the impulse to profit off the people leaving the Trump administration.”