Kathy Griffin Claims Jeff Zucker Cut Her Salary For Hosting CNN New Year’s Eve Event

After Kathy Griffin was fired last year from hosting CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve event after holding up a fake severed, bloody head of Donald Trump, we thought everyone has moved on from the incident. However, Griffin took to Twitter to spill some tea about her gig at CNN.

In a long and interesting Twitter thread, Griffin talked about hosting the event on CNN for eight years and then began to talk about her fee. “I worked my way up by the 10th year at CNN to get a fee of $150,000,” she wrote. “By the way, just as a point of reference, Anderson Cooper regularly bragged for years that his annual CNN contract was $10 million a year.”

She admits that $150,000 is a lot of money and went on to say, “The first two years I appeared on CNN, it didn’t even occur to me to ask for a salary. The 8th year when I asked Jeff Zucker for a raise, he was so angry he docked me 30%. I’m sorry to say I took the pay cut because I truly enjoyed making you all laugh.”

In the epic thread, she said that Leslie Jones (who she supported) was considered for the hosting gig, but after a couple of speed bumps, she ended up going to NBC as a correspondent for their New Year’s Eve event with hosts Carson Daly and Chrissy Teigen.

Griffin says she was “dropped from the show entirely because NBC Universal did not want her to appear on a different network.” She added that this didn’t pass “the smell test” and that Jeff Zucker could have made this happen and then asked “What say you, Jeff?”

She continued, “You have to admit, it didn’t make sense that NBC Uni wouldn’t have a problem with Andy Cohen, who also works for NBC Uni, appearing on CNN, but would have a problem with Leslie? Since Leslie didn’t work out, CNN couldn’t find one woman standup comic star to co-host? Jeff?”