Charlie Gibson Disdains Diane Sawyer?

(HMG) — This is kind of more fuel to previous rumors, that Charlie Gibson was “livid” over the choice of Diane Sawyer as his replacement on ABC’s “World News. Although they worked closely for more than a decade, and publicly, Charlie has expressed “tremendous respect and fondness” for Diane  privately, he supposedly can barely stand her, according to ABC insiders. An unnamed New York Post Page Six source said that he’d always given Sawyer “the stink eye” and that he “bad-mouths her openly and often.” Another source claimed that Gibson, 66, pushed the ABC News president to replace him with George Stephanopoulos, who is currently the host of Sunday morning’s This Week and is considered to be the favorite to replace Sawyer on Good Morning America. Gibson was reportedly “shocked” when Sawyer got the job and “angry that she stole his thunder” because “as soon as she was named it was all about Diane.”An ABC executive previously called these rumors “nonsense,” and ABC News President David Westin said he told Gibson from their earliest conversations about his retirement that Sawyer would be his replacement. Reached for comment on the bad blood rumors, Gibson himself told Page Six: “This notion that there is some kind of enmity that exists between Diane and me is just silly. We worked together for over seven years, side-by-side . . . We laughed together, cried together (particularly during the time after 9/11), and developed a strong mutual bond.