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CNN host Anderson Cooper was blasted on air by radio host Charlamagne tha God for the news network’s coverage of Donald Trump, to which the anchor had a stern response.
With just days to go until the historic US presidential election, which sees both Trump and Kamala Harris practically level in the polls, tensions are rising even amongst people supporting the same candidate.
On 24 October, veteran CNN host Cooper, who appears to have gotten over a painful moment during Hurricane Milton, got into a war of words with The Breakfast Club host Charlamagne tha God about CNN’s reporting on the Trump campaign.
The 46-year-old radio host, real name Lenard McKelvey, hit out at CNN after he was asked if Harris should appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast like Trump is reportedly planning to do.
An unimpressed Charlamagne replied by telling Cooper: “Americans need to keep looking at the rhetoric of Donald Trump because I don’t know why we’re even thinking about electing somebody who is talking about putting people in camps.”
He added: “I don’t know why we want to elect somebody who’s talking about mass deportation. I don’t know why we’re having this conversation about somebody who wants to terminate the constitution, to overthrow the results of an election.”
In response to Cooper’s question about Joe Rogan, Charlamagne asked: “Who gives a damn?” adding “I don’t think you have enough conversations” about Trump being a “fascist” and criticised them for having discussions about Harris’s ethnicity.
Then in a rare outburst, Cooper said: “Honestly, that’s bulls***, I’m sorry.”
Charlamagne fired back, saying: “I’ve seen those roundtable discussions a lot. Now that’s bulls***, Anderson, for you to say that y’all don’t have those conversations.”
Cooper then defended the network, but said that he had no control over what was said on other CNN shows. He did say “I don’t think any anchor on this network has been going around saying, ‘Is she Black?’”
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Earlier in the campaign, Trump made controversial comments about Harris claiming that the vice president only recently “became a Black woman”.
Talking to journalists in Chicago back in July, Trump said: “I didn’t know she was Black. She happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? … I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person.”
When it comes to criticising Trump, CNN has been one of the most outspoken networks in the United States, often enraging the former president, who has persistently branded them “fake news”.
