Mark Thompson, the chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, told the network’s top talent and 100 other journalists not to express outrage during President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

During a virtual meeting on Sunday, Thompson told Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, and others to “avoid pre-judging” Trump and not to express any outrage of their own during his swearing in as president.

According to Status reporter Oliver Darcy, Thompson said he didn’t want the “coverage to re-litigate the past,” given the tense relationship between CNN and Trump during his previous administration.

He cautioned the top presenters to avoid editorializing and warned against focusing on Trump’s legal problems while urging them to “keep an open mind” about the president.

Although attendees of the virtual meeting were allowed to ask questions at the end, no one did.

“What Thompson and other top brass had communicated was clear, and none of the meeting participants apparently had the desire to question the guidance,” Darcy said.

On Tuesday, Thompson convened a follow-up meeting with CNN journalists, encouraging them to be “tough-minded” but “fair-minded” regarding the new administration.

Virginia Moseley, CNN’s executive editor, joked during the call that the network was “out of practice” dealing with the rapid news cycle accompanying Trump’s presidency.

In August 2024, an interview between Elon Musk and then-presidential candidate Trump overwhelmed CNN‘s prime time ratings. Over 1.3 million listeners tuned in live to hear the business titans discuss current affairs on the social media platform’s “X Space” livestream feature, which has since garnered over 1 billion views.

That was more than double the 606,000 primetime viewers CNN averaged during the first quarter of 2024.

CNN and other liberal outlets ran a series of negative headlines about the Trump interview. One CNN contributor even likened it to “watching ‘Grumpy Old Men,'” a 1993 comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Other articles on CNN mocked the “technical difficulties” and suggested the conversation was too “friendly” or intended to help Trump “slow the rise of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.”

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