Chris Cuomo: ‘I Was Going to Kill Everybody, Including Myself’ After CNN Firing

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is opening up about the violent, suicidal thoughts he had after being fired from the news network in 2021.

It’s been nearly two years since Cuomo was ousted from CNN after advising his brother, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, on his misconduct accusations. But the longtime anchor still has a lot to say about his termination.

Cuomo appeared on Anthony Scaramucci’s Open Book podcast Wednesday, where he revealed just how outraged he was about his removal.

“I had to accept [my firing] because I was going to kill everybody, including myself,” Cuomo revealed. “Things can consume you.”

Cuomo admitted that he “makes a lot of mistakes” and sought therapy after he was fired.

“There is damage that is relatable, there is damage that is unrelatable to people that I have to deal with, that I am working on,” he said.

Following his removal from CNN, Cuomo was hired by NewsNation to host his primetime talk show, Cuomo, The New York Post reported. However, the viewership for his current show is nowhere near the ratings he received during his CNN heyday The October 2022 debut of Cuomo attracted 147,000 viewers; he averaged 1 million on CNN as the network’s top-rated primetime anchor.

It was “kind of embarrassing” to go from the leading anchor on CNN to a cable channel that “people don’t want to watch,” Cuomo said.

“At CNN, I wasn’t set up to be [No. 1],” Cuomo said. “I wasn’t the big name there, I didn’t have the big team, they didn’t do the advertising about me. But I was still No. 1.”

Cuomo was fired from CNN in December 2021 by the network’s boss at the time, Jeff Zucker. Months after Cuomo’s termination, Zucker stepped down after his years-long consensual affair with his top marketing officer, Allison Gollust, was revealed.