Liberal CNN primetime anchor Anderson Cooper was apparently puzzled by the mission of his ex-boss to make the network less partisan.
In a recent interview, Cooper opined on the June ousting of CNN chief Chris Licht, the man handpicked in 2022 by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav to restore the network's journalistic credibility and revive its dismal ratings. Licht was shown the door only a year later following internal strife among the rank and file that was widely publicized in his final weeks.
"I don’t know what Chris Licht’s analysis was. I don’t have much confidence that I actually know what he was thinking," Cooper said.
"That’s a problem, right?" New York Times' David Marchese asked.
"Yeah, that’s a problem," Cooper responded. "I mean, I read things in the paper, but I’m not sure what the point of it all was."
The "point" was made repeatedly by Zaslav, Cooper's corporate boss.
In April 2022, Zaslav said he wanted news to veer away from "advocacy" and in July of last year said America needed "a news network where everybody can come and be heard; Republicans, Democrats." This effort by CNN's parent company was a complete reversal from Licht's predecessor Jeff Zucker, who was lionized by CNN staff and transformed "the most trusted name in news" into a hyper partisan left-wing network during the Trump era until his own scandal-plagued exit in February 2022.
Licht seemed to take incremental steps to carry out Zaslav's editorial mission. He fired polarizing CNN figures like Brian Stelter, John Harwood and Jeffrey Toobin, pulled Don Lemon from CNN's primetime lineup (he was later terminated amid multiple controversies) and attempted to extend olive branches to GOP lawmakers hoping they'd agree to appear on the network.
For months, it was unclear whether Licht had the backing of his anchors to finally rid the liberal stench left behind by Zucker. It wasn't until CNN's now-infamous Trump town hall in March when the network's biggest stars openly rebelled against their boss and defied his goal to make the network nonpartisan.
One of the anchors leading that charge was Cooper.
"Many of you have expressed deep anger and disappointment. Many of you are upset that someone who attempted to destroy our democracy was invited to sit on a stage in front of a crowd of Republican voters to answer questions and predictably continued to spew lie, after lie, after lie," Cooper began his opening monologue the night after the town hall.
"And I get it. It was disturbing," Cooper continued. "It was disturbing to see and hear that person refer to a Black law enforcement officer as a thug, an adjective he used many times to describe Black men, and called Kaitlan Collins, the moderator, ‘nasty,’ which is what he calls any woman who stands up to him. It was disturbing to hear him speak so highly of QAnon conspirators and insurrectionists who assaulted police officers and our democracy on January 6. And it was awful to hear him spread ridiculous lies about the election."
Cooper shamed Trump supporters in the town hall audience who "laugh and applaud his lies" as well their approval of his attacks towards rape accuser E. Jean Carroll. The anchor also insisted despite Collins' attempts as moderator, trying to fact-check Trump is "impossible" since "he lies so shamelessly."
"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. But this is what I also get; 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," Cooper said. "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. They are your family members, your neighbors, and they are voting. And many said they're voting for him."
The CNN anchor went on to advocate his viewers get politically active, telling them, "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 added.
Cooper's scorched-earth monologue against Trump and his supporters was him reverting to the brazenly political posture he and his fellow anchors previously paraded on CNN's airwaves with Zucker's blessing when he was at the helm.
During the Zucker years, Cooper pulled no punches when it came to his coverage of Trump despite being labeled an anchor rather than an opinion host.
In 2019, the CNN anchor mocked Trump as the "third person in chief" for comments the president made referring to himself in third person, telling viewers the president "is not supposed to talk like Elmo."
Cooper accused Trump of being "giddy" during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who made Trump "dictator curious." He also suggested Trump was a "traitor" after Trump implied to ABC's George Stephanopoulos he'd accept dirt on 2020 opponents from foreign powers.
Ever since Trump took office, Cooper became a regular guest on the liberal "Late Show," making at least eight separate appearances in recent years. During a 2019 appearance, Cooper and host Stephen Colbert tore into Trump's border wall, joking it might be found in "deep in outer space" rather than actually being built at the southern border and ridiculed Trump's campaign promise of having Mexico pay for it.
On his own show, Cooper went to bat for Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who Trump had attacked over controversial comments she made about 9/11, accusing the then-president of being a "bully" and putting her life in danger.
CNN'S ANDERSON COOPER TRASHES ‘BULLY’ TRUMP OVER OMAR TWEET, SAYS HE HAS NO ‘SENSE OF SHAME’
"It's a cynical way to identify all Democrats with her arguably poor choice of words. The irony, of course, is that this is a president who has used a poor choice of words nearly every day of his presidency. But being a hypocrite is clearly not something this president has any fear of or sense of shame about," Cooper said. "It's also hard to argue that it's an accident that this president is, yet again, focusing his ire and his attention on a person of color, and a Muslim as well. How many times have we seen this before?"
Cooper, who notably was selected as one of the debate moderators during the 2016 presidential election, helped elevate disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti when the anti-Trump media darling dominated the news cycle in 2018. Avenatti, currently serving a 14-year prison sentence for cheating his clients, was welcomed on Cooper's show a whopping 20 times within a two-month span, more than any other cable news host.
The two of them had gotten so cozy that Cooper reportedly introduced Avenatti to the literary agent who later became a key witness in the fraud case against him brought by his ex-client Stormy Daniels.
Cooper further ratcheted up his hostile coverage of Trump in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. He accused Trump of "hijacking" his own White House task force briefings in an attempt, Cooper asserted, to "rewrite the history" of the president's "reprehensibly irresponsible response to this virus."
"What the president showed us today is what the nation's top scientists have to deal with every day, a president who now uses these briefings as a reelection platform, an opportunity to lie, to deflect, to attack, to bully and cover up his own deadly dismissals with a virus for crucial weeks," Cooper said in April 2020, later telling viewers, "I just have to point out this is not normal. And it matters because this is life and death."
In July 2020, Cooper slammed Trump holding an event at the Rose Garden as a substitute for a campaign rally.
"There was no applause, only silence because this wasn't some stadium pack full of supporters who come to cheer and jeer and bask in the glow of this artificially-tan man," Cooper said. "His meandering screed was not close to anything one would normally expect or accept of a president, but that shouldn't surprise us. That he chose to do it in the Rose Garden and steps away from the Oval Office, that too should not surprise us either. That's how numb we are. We listen to this man muse and meander, rant and regurgitate the same tired tropes and untruthful claims. We watch them boast and brag and preen and do that odd thing with his nose when he sucks in air very loudly and none of it surprises us. That is how far we have fallen."
"He calls it ‘leadership,’ but to call it that would be misleading," Cooper added.
On several occasions, Cooper ridiculed Trump's weight. He declared him a "little man despite his girth and size," said he should "look in the mirror" and "get on a scale" when Trump spoke about the most vulnerable people affected by COVID since he "is elderly and obesity is an underlying condition." In the days following the 2020 election, when Trump refused to concede to Joe Biden's victory, Cooper compared Trump to "an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over, but he just hasn't accepted it, and he wants to take everybody down with him including this country." Cooper later walked back his "obese turtle" insult following backlash.
Cooper, the son of famed heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, was accused of elitism during CNN's live coverage of Jan. 6 as he ridiculed Trump supporters in Washington D.C. that day. He said they were "going to go back, you know, to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn they’re staying at, and the Garden Marriott, and they’re going to have some drinks, and they're going to talk about the great day they had in Washington." He attempted to clean up his remarks afterward.
Despite Trump being out of office, Cooper continued to make his antipathy towards him clear to viewers. During a panel discussion last year, he compared Trump to a "drunk relative who is yells out obscenities or incredibly inappropriate things, and you don't know what to do about them and so people just ignore him."
"Soon he'll be, like, wandering around with an onion tied to his belt talking about movies used to cost a nickel… There's no question there, I just felt I wanted to say that," Cooper told a guest before letting out a giggle.
In June 2023, Cooper blasted Trump's claim that he was using "bravado" when allegedly touting classified documents to Mar-a-Lago guests after he left office, telling viewers Trump's "explanation now is, ‘I was just BS-ing people.' He didn’t say ‘BS.’ He said it was ‘bravado’ – fancier word, same BS."
As recently as last month, Cooper swiped Trump following his arraignment when the former president tore into the deteriorating conditions of Washington D.C., telling reporters, "This is not the place that I left."
"We should point out that when the former president left office and left Washington, D.C., the city was on lockdown because of the attack on January 6. That is the city he left behind," Cooper knocked Trump.
Trump was always his biggest target with the relentless fat insults and dictator comparisons but Cooper never shied away from bashing other prominent Republicans including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, making his seething animosity towards conservatives even more obvious.
Cooper's aggressive approach to Trump and Republicans has certainly outweighed his coverage of President Biden and Democrats. Criticisms of Democrats are few and far between and rather than giving overzealous rants against Biden, he has rolled out the red carpet for the 46th president, moderating two town halls in 2021, both of which were criticized for their "softball" questions.
So, while he claims Licht's mission to try to make CNN nonpartisan was not clear to him, Cooper's body of work certainly makes it clear he diametrically opposed it.
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