Anderson Cooper Hits Back at Donald Trump Jr. for ‘Idiotic’ Conspiracy Theory

CNN’s Anderson Cooper hit back late Monday after Donald Trump Jr. accused him of doctoring footage of the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. Both Trump Jr. and a Housing and Urban Development official had been circulating a photo on social media showing Cooper reporting in waist-deep water while the cameraman filming him from a few feet away was only ankle-deep. “Stop lying to try to make @realDonaldTrump look bad,” Trump Jr. tweeted along with the photo. Lynne Patton, chief of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in the New York region, had posted a meme making a similar claim on Instagram. “The idea I am kneeling in water to make it look deep is idiotic,” Cooper said on CNN, noting that the picture Trump Jr. had been circulating was from Hurricane Ike in 2008. “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,” he said, playing footage that debunked the conspiracy by showing him wade into the water. “I didn’t see him down in North Carolina the last few days helping out, lending a hand,” Cooper said. “But I’m sure he was busy doing something important besides just tweeting lies.”