One late summer evening, the inner sanctum of the media-entertainment vortex descended upon the expansive garden of David Zaslav’s $25 million East Hampton estate, where the well-connected Discovery C.E.O. hosts an annual Labor Day party. This year’s guest list comprised the standard liberal in-crowd: Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Bon Jovi, Oprah, Alec Baldwin, Barry Diller, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Katie Couric, to name a few. They were treated to a performance by Earth, Wind & Fire, who belted out “September” after the sun went down.
But there was another set of famous faces mingling in the crowd—the people whose job it is to cover the most compelling reality show in history, the Trump administration, for America’s original 24-hour news channel, CNN. Don Lemon, who anchors the network’s 10 p.m. hour,…
