#CNN’s Anderson Cooper Addresses Trump Town Hall Debacle: “You Have Every Right to be Outraged”

With CNN facing a storm of criticism for its handling of a town hall event with Donald Trump, the network’s star anchor Anderson Cooper addressed the backlash on air on Thursday night.

The cable news network has been on damage control since Wednesday night’s calamitous town hall moderated by Kaitlan Collins, an event that saw the former president repeat a number of lies about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the pandemic as well as peddle conspiracy theories and disparage and defame a sexual assault victim who had just this week been awarded a $5 million settlement against him. Pundits from across the political spectrum were almost unanimous in thinking that the event was a huge win for Trump and an unmitigated disaster for CNN.

On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, Cooper opened the show by directly addressing the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the town hall, acknowledging that many viewers had “expressed deep anger and disappointment” at what transpired. “Many of you are upset that someone who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on the stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions and predictably continued to spew lie after lie after lie. And I get it. It was disturbing,” Cooper said about the cavalcade of criticism CNN has faced in the last 24 hours.

Cooper then spent some time listing all the terrible things Trump was allowed to say live on CNN without any pushback, implicitly conceding the network was railroaded by the former president. “Now, many of you think CNN shouldn’t have given him any platform to speak. And I understand the anger about that, giving him the audience the time. I get that,” he said.

Echoing some of the points that network CEO Chris Licht had made to CNN staff earlier on Thursday, Cooper then attempted to pivot and spin why CNN felt it was important to cover Trump. “The man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night, that man is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president. And according to polling, no other Republican is even close. That man you were so upset to hear from last night. He may be President of the United States in less than two years. And that audience that upset you, that’s a sampling of about half the country.”

He added, “If last night showed anything, it showed [Trump winning] can happen again. It is happening again. He hasn’t changed and he is running hard. You have every right to be outraged today and angry, and never watch this network again.”

Cooper then rather bizarrely put the onus back on the audience to not remain ignorant of people on the other side of the political divide and incredibly implied that some people were ignorant of Trump. “Do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite. If lives are allowed to go unchecked, as imperfect as our ability to check them is on a stage in real time, those lies continue and those lies spread,” he said.

He concluded his remarks by once again repeating the implication that CNN was right to platform Trump and that it was up to the audience to combat the deception and toxicity associated with the former president. “If you’re angry or upset, I understand, but you have the power to do something about it. You can actually get involved. You can make a difference. Whatever side of the aisle you’re on after last night none of us can say, I didn’t know what’s out there. I didn’t know what’s coming.”

Cooper’s comments, particularly the reference to “silo,” only seemed to add fuel to the pundit criticism CNN has been subjected to since Wednesday night. “I’m sorry, Anderson, but I don’t believe the choices are between hosting live a firehose of falsehood and “staying in your silo,”” tweeted Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University.

“Anderson Cooper scolding the audience for criticizing CNN. Sanctimoniously insulting them by saying maybe they hadn’t paid attention to what he’s done since leaving office. He remains the most overrated man in TV news,” tweeted former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.

The New Yorker‘s Emily Nussbaum tweeted, “Such a straw-man argument. The choice isn’t between showing DT & ignoring him! It’s nonsense to suggest that anyone who objected to CNN’s grotesque faux-journalistic circus just wants to stay in a Trump-free silo— the opposite is true. We want him to be covered responsibly.”

“Two problems with this spin: 1) We have had 8 solid years of watching Trump amid his followers, including, extensively, on CNN. 2) Having an audience of supporters was clearly a precondition that was demanded of CNN. Any discussion has to start with being forthright about that,” tweeted writer Mark Harris.

Writer Jonathan Bernhardt wrote, “Easily the most irritating part of [Cooper’s comments] has been the smug assertion from allegedly serious people that the journalistically interesting thing about Donald Trump, former President of the United States, is that people simply don’t hear enough from him.”

In reaction to Cooper’s comments, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan tweeted, “This is what’s known as a ‘false dilemma fallacy’.”