Update: Chris Licht was ousted from his position as CNN CEO. As the meme goes: see you at the gym, brother.
The one safe space left for CEOs appears to be the gym. This was made apparent in a tremendously written and thoroughly reported story about CNN’s meltdown in The Atlantic. Aside from the bleak reality that Licht’s CNN is on a somewhat rudderless mission to find the true center of politics by seeking “absolute truth” while not being able to really describe what that means, another meltdown is also mentioned: fat melting off the new CEO’s frame. Licht claimed to have dropped 50 pounds over the course of three years, thanks to his intense and exclusive trainer, Joe Maysonet, of Manhattan’s J-Train Fitness.
Licht’s own boss, the recently heckled David Zazlav, declined to give The Atlantic an interview to show support for his boy, but Maysonet took his place. In fact, Maysonet, who Licht described as “super fucking liberal,” comes off as a hardass with a clearer political compass than his client. The trainer appears 16 times in the story, sounding more like a confidante-slash-therapist than workout instructor—and Licht says as much. Like many people inside and outside of CNN, Maysonet is skeptical of Licht’s plans for the network. Displaying the intimate bond of trainer and client, Maysonet appears to be of the few people in Licht’s shrinking circle who can be trusted to tell the truth.
It makes sense. If you happen to have a casual lifting buddy, you know the heightened cortisol and exhaustion basically prime you to overshare with whoever will listen. Paired with a private space, the elite gym might be the one place that CEOs can feel free from the load-bearing weight of shareholders, critical coworkers, and other looky-loos who just don’t get it.
To illustrate the sacred the bond between trainer and elite client: when reached for comment, J-Train preemptively asked if I was looking to speak with Joe on matters with respect to Chris Licht and declined to comment if so. (Mark Zuckerberg’s jiu-jitsu trainer, on the other hand, went to the mat for his guy, claiming that Zuckerberg was not choked out during a recent match, as The New York Times reported, but instead was just grunting with gusto, which was confused for snoring.)
In the story, Licht remarked that he was “a fucking machine,” when asked why he was skipping a meal. But he might have also had help suppressing his appetite: An anonymous source told the Daily Mail that Licht was singing the praises of miracle weight loss drug Ozempic since 2021. (Licht declined to comment.)
Either way, CEOs like Licht have finally arrived at a sacred knowledge that the lowly lunchtime-lifting freelancer unlocked decades ago: you may not be able to mold and contort the media industry to your whims, but you can always exert control in the squat rack.
