her replacement. it will put the controversial health care law front and center for a new round of national debate and scrutiny. here now to talk about it, byron york joins us, chief political correspondent of the washington examiner. the president yesterday was talking in glowing terms about how wonderful kathleen sebelius was. there aren t many people who think so. that s kind of standard washington theater. an aide who d caused an enormous amount of problems and embarrassment for the administration, probably a lot of it the white house s fault as well, has finally decided to leave. the administration s delighted. and then they go out and say a lot of nice things about her, perhaps hoping that she won t do some sort of exit interview or write on article or a book that s negative about the administration. because that is the norm.
but i simply saw this as a way for cia to pound its chest and say, look, we warned, therefore laying the blame on the state department. i did not think that appropriate. so this conflict between what morell said he believes and what he did and who he underscored in an email from the director david petraeus at the time the talking points were written. the language about the warnings was factual and relevant and petraeus felt it should have been included because without it, he said, the talking points were useless. so despite the admonition of his boss, the cia director at the time, morell went ahead and removed that factual language about the warnings and that is significant because when morell retired from the cia he said in his exit interview that he wanted to advice a presidential campaign in the future and anonymous sources said that he was very close to mrs. clinton. so what you see here is he
interview, so to speak, he said you know what? i probably alienated many potential view erts, but i think jeff zucker looked at the lineup and said my clean up hitter is batting under .200 and he s triking out a lot. numbers led to this decision that it was time to let piers go. he was getting beaten by this network and rachel maddow, as well. let s not lose sight of the undisputed fact that the ratings were not doing well and were sinking. but marissa, coming back to the question of personality, when you re on the air in prime time every night, your on personality is why people tune in or click away. his on-air persona, not exactly warm and cuddly. no. and i think that he was thinking that, you happen, everybody on cnn has become more opinionated. i think that that is something that jeff is promoting. but i think that with piers jeff zucker.
marissa guthrie and joe concha. let s try not to have an unbelievably stupid conversation. piers morgan telling the new york times that a big part of the reason his show was canceled by cnn was because of his crusade on the issue of gun control. is that true? no, i don t think his problems started when he started banging on, as he would say, about gun control. i think for piers the show was all about him and not his guests. you have to sort of make that subtle distinction where the show is actually about what the guest is saying. and it was all about piers, it was about his enthusiasm, his opinions, his british accent, and i think ultimately viewers just didn t cop to that. certainly it didn t help that this was a british guy lecturing americans about their loss. absolutely. we had a british guy, as you said, pontificating about american culture, politics and gun control. by his own admission in his exit interview, so to speak, he said
by his own admission in his exit interview, so to speak, he said you know what? i probably alienated many potential view erts, but i think jeff zucker looked at the lineup and said my clean up hitter is batting under .200 and he s triking out a lot. numbers led to this decision that it was time to let piers go. he was getting beaten by this network and rachel maddow, as well. let s not lose sight of the undisputed fact that the ratings were not doing well and were sinking. but marissa, coming back to the question of personality, when you re on the air in prime time every night, your on personality is why people tune in or click away. his on-air persona, not exactly warm and cuddly. no. and i think that he was thinking that, you happen, everybody on cnn has become more opinionated. i think that that is something that jeff is promoting.