The Slatest

Anderson Cooper Interviewed Trump, and It Was a Disgrace

Before his Wednesday night interview, Donald Trump had also sat down with Anderson Cooper for a town hall on Feb. 18 in Columbia, South Carolina, pictured above.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It’s been a bad election year for CNN. The network’s debates have been embarrassing, its primary-night coverage consistently unwatchable, and its fawning treatment of Donald Trump pathetic. Trump is of course a media star who has been thrown softball after softball throughout the campaign, but his interviews on CNN, with everyone from Don Lemon to Wolf Blitzer, have been particularly embarrassing.

Wednesday night was no exception. Instead of being slobbered over by Lemon or Blitzer, Trump “faced off” against Anderson Cooper, who proceeded to ask Trump a number of silly horse-race questions in the most admiring manner possible. “Huge night last night,” Cooper began, setting the tone for the rest of the conversation. “Did you have any idea that you were going to win as big as you did?”

It would take too long to go through every single Cooper question, and some of the ones included below aren’t even really questions, but rather just inane statements. (My favorite: After Trump gave a dishonest account of his supposed opposition to the Iraq war and referred to a 2002 interview he did on Howard Stern, Cooper not only refused to challenge him, but merely piped up by saying, “It’s a great interview.”) Terrific. When, after 30 minutes, the conversation got a tad more serious, Trump merely talked over Cooper, who did not really confront him with past statements (as Megyn Kelly did so effectively at the last Republican debate) nor dispute his dishonest answers in any meaningful way.

Anyway, here are some more of the lowlights:

Do you think it’s the message on trade in particular in Michigan that was effective?

If you win Florida and Ohio, is it over? 

You think you’ll win [in Ohio]? 

You think you’ll get all the delegates? 

You’ve had a lot of money thrown at you the last few weeks. 

This whole #NeverTrump movement, is it dead? 

What do you think was Rubio’s demise? 

Did [Rubio] get under your skin?

Going after you with jokes, insults, that took him off his message? 

There’s a lot of higher voter turnouts. 

How important is unlocking gridlock in Washington? 

Donald Trump as president reaches out to Democrats and Republicans? 

So bottom line, tomorrow night you are expecting a different tone but you’ll be ready for anything?