James O’Keefe’s ‘Project Veritas’ is releasing several hours’ worth of whistleblower tapes from inside CNN’s newsroom this week – so now it looks like I owe Tucker Carlson an apology. I always thought Tucker was joking when he said that CNN president Jeff Zucker is calling the newsroom and giving the CNN anchors their marching orders for the day! Whenever Tucker made that claim in the past, I just shrugged it off as a joke because it was so ridiculous.

What news organization would have the president of the company guiding its news direction on a day-to-day basis? That would be literally insane! Having seen the first of O’Keefe’s releases from inside CNN’s newsroom, I stand corrected. And Tucker: I apologize for thinking that was a joke.

Cary Poarch is a contractor technician who worked at CNN’s Washington, DC bureau for the past two years. Earlier this year, the rampant anti-Trump bias at CNN compelled him to wear an undercover camera for O’Keefe’s Project Veritas. O’Keefe says Poarch has provided his group with tons of “off the record” conversations Poarch had with CNN staffers.

Poarch tells Project Veritas, “I noticed… in the first three to six months [in 2017], that there was a strong group-think that permeated through the halls and that everyone was on board the ‘I hate Trump train.’”

The thing that is most fascinating about Poarch’s tapes so far is the fact that Jeff Zucker is running CNN like a tyrant. The situation at CNN is unlike any scenario I saw in the first dozen years of my own career as a journalist.

For those who don’t know, media companies operate (well, they’re supposed to operate) with an ethical wall of separation between the news division and the sales/business division. A news director or managing editor runs the news side of the company, and some guy with a business degree runs the business side. Without that ethical separation, it’s impossible for a newsroom to provide “fair and balanced” news coverage.

Quick example: The business side of a media company sells advertising to a car dealership. The owner of the car dealership is arrested for, say, running hookers as a side business. Without that ethical wall of separation, the company president could tell the newsroom to not cover the arrest, because the company doesn’t want to lose those advertising dollars.

That’s why Brit Hume, for example, runs the news division at Fox News while the Murdochs run the business side of the company. It’s the only ethical way to run a modern news operation that relies on advertising dollars to exist. Every news organization I’ve ever worked for operates this way.

But not CNN!

Every morning, Monday through Friday, CNN President Jeff Zucker calls the CNN newsroom and lays down the law for CNN employees. For example, MSNBC recently held a firearms forum with the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates in Las Vegas – you know, the one where Beto the Furry declared that he was going to take away everyone’s AR-15? You might think that even though the event was on MSNBC, other news stations would still want to cover it as a matter of public interest. The candidates, after all, are running for the highest office in the land. Even if you disagree with them, it’s still important to know what they’re saying. Fox News had no problem with covering the highlights of the event, even though it was MSNBC’s exclusive event.

Here’s how Caesar Jeff Zucker directed the CNN staff that day:

“I don’t care about the MSNBC event, okay? I don’t care about them. Let’s just stay very focused on impeachment and everything that happens today, because, look, you’re gonna be coming on at 3 o’clock. Trump is at 2. All the president’s men are part of the cover-up.”

Say, isn’t the Democrat National Committee supposed to be standing up to promote its candidates for the 2020 election? I wonder how the DNC, as well as Spartacus Booker, Pocahontas Warren, Ukrainian Gas Guru Joe, and Not Mrs. Willy Brown feel about CNN completely ignoring a major Democrat campaign event just so Jeff Zucker can run his own personal impeachment-palooza 24/7 on CNN?

Here’s Jeff Zucker telling his underlings how to cover a Republican Senator:

“So, I just wanna say on the Lindsey Graham front, I know that there’s a lot of people at CNN that are friendly with Lindsey Graham. Time to knock that off and it’s time to call him out.”

Other CNN employees share some time in the limelight of Cary Poarch’s camera as well. CNN Media Coordinator Nick Neville tells Poarch that Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Jake Tapper and Fredo Cuomo all feel a visceral, personal hatred for President Donald Trump.

Neville says on camera, “Hannity is truly conservative, he lets you know. However, Don Lemon comes on, he makes you think he’s objective news… I’m not trying to bash CNN, but he makes you think he’s objective news but he’s blatantly opinionated… He’s blatantly anti-Trump, he’s blatantly left.”

CNN Floor Director Hiram Gonzalez tells the whistleblower, “I think we’re just trying every single way to show that we’re on the right side. The light side. We’re against the dark side.”

Get it? Politics is a religion for the left, and CNN is on the side of light, truth and beauty. If you disagree with CNN and their overlord Jeff Zucker, you’re a bad person and on the side of darkness and evil. No bias there!

My favorite quote from whistleblower tapes so far is from CNN Floor Manager Mike Brevna. He describes a female CNN employee on Election Night in 2016, a grown woman who collapsed on the floor and began sobbing into her hands when the election was called for Donald Trump. “It was like we were at a funeral.”

Let me just say… that’s hilarious.

It’s also remarkable how the timing of James O’Keefe’s big scoop worked out so well. CNN has been telling us for three weeks now that whistleblowers are always noble and sacred and holy, and we must believe the secret whistleblowers leaking false anti-Trump information from the shadows. And then O’Keefe reveals that he’s had a whistleblower recording inside CNN for months. Now we’ll get to experience the joy of CNN explaining how this whistleblower is a partisan hack trying to undermine the First Amendment. Good times!

Bravo to Project Veritas once again. (And apologies to Tucker Carlson. I really did think he was joking.)