CNN’s Anderson Cooper set the record straight Friday night after former President Donald Trump attacked him again over the anchor’s interview with writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump, in a lengthy diatribe against a verdict finding the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation to the tune of $83.3 million plus interest, blasted Cooper for supposedly coaching Carroll to attack Trump when he interviewed her in 2019.
Here’s what Trump had to say about Cooper’s interview with Carroll during his nearly hour-long public appearance Friday:
“Then there was an Anderson Cooper interview where she said, essentially, ‘No, he didn’t rape me.’ She was selling her book. She wrote a book. The book would have been a total failure, probably was anyway, although probably sold more, recently. Again, this was a woman that wasn’t doing well until she came out with the stuff about me, and that’s happened with others too, by the way. She’s not the only one. But the Anderson Cooper tape, and in the Anderson Cooper tape there’s an interview with her and Cooper says something to the effect, ‘Did he rape you? Did he rape you?’ He was so happy. ‘Did he rape you?’ And she gave a very good answer for me but a bad answer for CNN, for Anderson. And he said, uh, ‘We’re going to commercial break right now.’ Then, she came back from commercial break and she was much more hostile. But this man wouldn’t let us use the tape or the proper questions having to do with the tape. Wouldn’t let us. The judge, Judge Kaplan, wouldn’t let it be used. We wanted to get the outtakes, in other words, what did Anderson Cooper talk to her about during that intermission for a commercial that he called for immediately. Wait till you see this, I mean, some of you have seen it, some of you haven’t. ‘We’re going to commercial break right now.’ And so what happened is we weren’t able to use it.”
Cooper went on to explain what actually happened during the interview.
“I normally don’t respond when Trump says something about me. I mean, what is the point? He recently referred to me using a female first name, which I guess is like a third-grade gay taunt? I think he called me Allison or Ashley Cooper, I don’t really recall. It’s not worth replying to. But this time it’s kind of different cause it’s just kind of demonstratively false,” Cooper said.
He went on:
“The problem with this conspiracy theory is that this interview was actually prerecorded and we had prerecord a toss to commercial break and then welcome viewers back after a commercial break so that the entire two parts of the interview would fit in my show that night. … You don’t sit there for the entire four minutes of the commercial break with the guest just waiting to come back to the show. Because it’s prerecorded, you don’t have to just sit there during commercial break. … I know this because we have the tape.”
Cooper then showed what happened during the commercial break, which was him immediately getting back to his interview with Carroll after checking with his producers if he was clear to restart.
Trump was in court Friday as his lawyers fought to overturn a verdict against him.
Trump attorney D. John Sauer told three 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges that the civil trial in Carroll’s lawsuit was muddied by improper evidence.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, told judges the evidence in question was proper, and that there was plenty of proof in the nearly two-week-long trial of Carroll’s claim that Trump attacked her in a luxury department store dressing room decades ago. She said the “Access Hollywood” tape, as the trial judge had noted, could be viewed as a confession.
Trump left court in a motorcade, then delivered a lengthy diatribe against the case at Trump Tower, where he said again that Carroll — and other women who had accused him of sexual assault — were making everything up.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
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Publish date : 2024-09-07 05:22:00
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