Awkward sauce was on the menu Thursday night as major media execs jockeyed for position at Polo Bar.
Former CNN president Jeff Zucker and anchor Don Lemon were at Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar this week celebrating UTA vice chairman Jay Sures’ birthday.
But another deposed CNN power player kept his distance at the tony eatery — as recently canned CEO Chris Licht awkwardly dined across the room with an unnamed tech exec.
A stream of well-wishers stopping by Sures’ table to say “happy birthday” to the power agent included First Lady Jill Biden, Tamara Mellon and Mike Ovitz, Kelly Clarkson and Rita Wilson.
Licht was apparently glancing over, according to another spy, who told us, “he did not go over and say hello.”
Another source told us that the savvy power haunt kept Licht a safe distance from Sures’ table, where Lemon (who Licht fired) and Zucker (who Licht replaced, but who continued to have strong allegiance within CNN) supped.
A source said Licht was seated at a far off table, because, “it would just be too awkward. They pushed him off to the side.”
Also celebrating Sures’ birthday at his table for eight were Zucker’s significant other (who was also his controversial former lieutenant at the news network) Allison Gollust, as well as Lemon’s fiancé, Tim Malone, Sures’ wife, Linda Nyvltova, NewsNation host Dan Abrams and ABC News correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.
A rep for the restaurant could not be reached, and Licht did not comment.
But another source who caught all the awkward action confirmed Licht was seated on the opposite side of the dining room “at one of the four ‘quarter tables.’” But the source insisted of Licht, “he wasn’t pushed off to the side, and he couldn’t see them.”
Meanwhile, Biden was at the restaurant dining with her granddaughter, we hear.
A source said of the First Lady, “[Biden] knew Jay and she knew Don, and a few others at [Sures’] table. She said, ‘happy birthday.’”
We hear that a big topic of conversation at Sures’ table was a fiery letter he wrote as a member of the University of California system’s Board of Regents in response to a group called the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council.
The coalition of faculty members had told the Board of Regents its statements about the recent Hamas attack on Israeli civilians “excuse Israeli genocide and erase Palestinian lives.”
The group wanted the school system “to stand against Israel’s war crimes against and ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
But Sures responded as part of a scathing response, “there are absolutely no words to describe how appalling and repugnant I found” the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council letter, and he added that it was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.”
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