Anderson Cooper vs Donald Trump Jr.

When Donald Trump Jr. fired at him with a flood-related conspiracy theory — Anderson Cooper took the gloves off and hit back.

Transcript

00:00There was plenty of deep water all around.

00:02The idea that I am kneeling in water to make it look deep is, frankly, idiotic.

00:22Over the weekend, however, the son of the president, Donnie Jr., tweeted out this picture

00:27of me in waist-high water, my camera crew a few feet away on higher ground in only a little bit

00:31of water. Donnie Jr. was claiming it showed me in Florence faking the depths of flood waters

00:37in order to somehow harm his father. Now, the pictures popped up in various memes alleging

00:42fake news. Some guy I've never heard of made a joke on Twitter that I was on my knees in the

00:46water to make it look deep and then went on to say that I was used to being on my knees, which

00:50I assume is some sort of anti-gay reference. Very classy. Anyway, I've covered hurricanes for about

00:5614 years, and it really does make me sad to think that anyone would believe that I would try to fake

01:00something or overly dramatize a disaster. Now, I debated whether I should even respond tonight to

01:06the president's son. I know he considers himself an outdoorsman and pays a lot of money to be led

01:11to wildlife in Africa that he then kills, but I'm not sure if he's ever actually been to a hurricane

01:16or a flood. I didn't see him down in North Carolina in the last few days helping out,

01:20lending a hand, but I'm sure he was busy doing something important besides just tweeting lies.

01:27So

01:46number one, this was not Hurricane Florence. This was taken 10 years ago during Hurricane Ike.

01:51As for those who think I was kneeling or faking the water level or making it look worse than it

01:56was or standing in some sort of a hole, this is an area where people had been trapped on the

02:00roofs of their homes by water. I'm going to show you, in fact, a clip of me walking in the water,

02:05and rather than trying to make it sound worse than it was, I just want you to note that I'm

02:08talking about how the water is actually receding, subsiding. The good news here, Rob, water is

02:14subsiding a little bit. I just want to walk over and just show our viewers. Also, meanwhile, we're

02:18still seeing paramedics, fire personnel, fish and wildlife folks in boats. I don't expect the

02:25president's son to ever admit he was wrong or one of the president's former advisors or, frankly,

02:30anyone else who's retweeted these pictures, but I at least thought that they and you should know

02:34the truth.