CNN’s Anderson Cooper went after Donald Trump Jr. and others “with a blue check on Twitter” Thursday night after they criticized a CNN town hall before watching it.
“Look, I get Donny Trump Jr. attacking CNN and a 17-year-old Swede,” said Cooper of the president’s son, who was one of many who posted sarcastic comments about the network’s inclusion of teen climate activist Greta Thunberg in a coronavirus town hall. “That’s like low-hanging fruit. That’s like paying thousands of dollars to shoot exotic animals on a game farm. Ya know, it’s easy, and I know Donny Trump Jr. just wants his dad to love him or notice him in a way that’s not mocking him, but I just find it fascinating to watch the phony online outrage machine generate content on Twitter based on something that was real to begin with.”
The “phony online outrage machine” Cooper referred to was in action Wednesday. After CNN announced Thunberg’s inclusion in a town hall on the pandemic, “someone with a blue check on Twitter saw the initial ad, was outraged, and claimed we had booked Greta Thunberg to be an expert on a coronavirus panel with other health experts,” the primetime anchor said.
“Then, of course, Donny Trump Jr. jumped into this, which is weird, because I thought he was allegedly running whatever was left of the Trump organization. Shouldn’t that be a really busy job since it’s allegedly such a great big company?”
Thunberg did appear in a segment Thursday night to discuss COVID-19’s impact on young people and how they need to take the pandemic as seriously as adults.
Earlier Thursday, Cooper had appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, where he said that the administration’s “war on truth” has become “life or death” amid the coronavirus crisis.
Friday morning, Trump Jr. responded to Cooper’s remarks on Twitter, posting a picture of the journalist in waist-high flood water while his camera crew filmed from a higher, less flooded area. The president’s son added two emojis — a clown and a banana — to his tweet.
Trump Jr. has tweeted the photo of Cooper before. In 2018, Cooper responded on his show at the time, “I’ve covered hurricanes for about 14 years and it really does make me sad to think that anyone would believe that I would try to fake something or overly-dramatize a disaster.”
"It's like a tween on TikTok. You've got to produce content lest you miss out on a cycle of phony outrage."@andersoncooper slams the online outrage against CNN booking climate activist Greta Thunberg as a guest for a coronavirus town hall.https://t.co/EfECwkRegt pic.twitter.com/ozvyB0vZAD
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) May 15, 2020