CNN appears set to name a new CEO in the coming days after the leftist network fired their last CEO over the summer following a damning profile piece and a town hall debacle involving former President Donald Trump.

Puck News reported that as early as tomorrow, CNN is expected to name former New York Times Company CEO and BBC director general Mark Thompson to be the network’s next chairman and CEO.

The report said that Thompson has a reputation for “restructuring legacy media assets and pursuing innovative growth strategies” and that he could not be more different than the network’s last CEO, Chris Licht.

Thompson “deftly architected a plan that rescued the business” at The New York Times “from its darkest financial hour in generations,” the report added. “His various restructurings and reorgs repositioned the Times Co. as a product-first company that successfully built out a portfolio of lifestyle businesses that supported the news gathering organization.”

Licht was fired from the company by Discovery CEO David Zaslav just 16 months after being picked for the position.

“For a number of reasons things didn’t work out and that’s unfortunate,” Zaslav said. “It’s really unfortunate. And ultimately that’s on me. And I take full responsibility for that.”

Zaslav told employees that CNN is “in the process of conducting a wide search” for a new leader that could “take a while.”

Licht’s tenure at CNN was rough from the start. Weeks after Licht took over the reins, the cable news giant’s attempt at launching a streaming service failed after a month in operation, attracting fewer than 10,000 daily users. The CNN executive also faced criticism from his employees and poor ratings performances in the news channel’s primetime slots.

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Familiar faces on the network, such as longtime journalist Brian Stelter and host Don Lemon, were axed under Licht’s reign. The tumultuous leadership of Licht came to a boiling point when the network hosted a town hall with former President Donald Trump in May. Leftist critics ripped the company for giving Trump a platform. Politicians and media personalities from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Joe Scarborough were angered by CNN’s decision to host Trump on the platform that has consistently offered friendly coverage to Democrats.

Zach Jewell contributed to this report. 

A contributor on MSNBC complained this week about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis demonizing the man who murdered three African American people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville as a “scumbag,” claiming that doing so pins the atrocity solely on the individual who was responsible, which he claimed was a bad thing.

Trymaine Lee made the remarks during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” after DeSantis addressed the shooting over the weekend.

“This shooting, based on the manifesto that they’ve discovered from the scumbag that did this, was racially motivated,” DeSantis said, adding: “We condemn what happened in the strongest possible terms. We’ve offered support for Sheriff Waters in the city of Jacksonville, and we send our condolences to the victims and their families who were the victims of a very cowardly act.”

Lee said that “so many folks” had a problem with the language because “it places the onus on one individual and the actions of one individual as opposed to a nationwide sickness of White supremacy in this country and the violence it fuels.”

“And so long as he is a scumbag or as long as there’s a mental health issue, you don’t have to engage with the idea that there are, you know, co-conspirators online, there are co-conspirators who create legislation that divide, and other people,” Lee continued. “There are all these other forces that are contributing to this kind of violence, but as long as it’s the act of one individual, it’s just a scumbag, then you don’t take the true issue head on.”

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WATCH:

MSNBC attacks DeSantis for calling the Jacksonville shooter a "scumbag." Seriously. Trymaine Lee: "it places the onus on one individual and the actions of one individual as opposed to a nationwide sickness of white supremacy in the country and the violence it fuels." pic.twitter.com/IZKMGqAgU9

— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) August 29, 2023