After reports this week that President Trump is growing increasingly frustrated with Rudy Giuliani’s increasingly unhinged TV interviews, CNN’s Chris Cuomo told The View that he—and other members of the administration—are “always welcome” on his primetime show.
But after Cuomo rightly pointed out that Giuliani is acting more like a “PR flack” than a lawyer and “trying to spread as much doubt about as many things as possible, even if it means doing things that would make a lawyer blush,” the morning show’s hosts wondered why he keeps giving over his platform to people who are known for lying to the American people.
“I have Mr. Giuliani, I have Ms. Conway on the show,” Cuomo said, to which Sunny Hostin shot back, “You have her on too much.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“I have the president's best defenders on the show because I want my audience to know, this is who the president wants you to believe, this is what the president wants you to believe,” Cuomo said, “and then you try to test it.”
The host is known for his epically long—and often substance-free—debates with Conway on his Cuomo Prime Time hour. Recently, the White House counselor accused him on air of using a “slur” against Trump when Cuomo called the president a “liar.”
Cuomo’s defense of his “open dialogue” with the White House continued after a break. “If the president of the United States believes that this person represents him and this is the best that he has to offer the American people," Cuomo said, "I want to expose that on my show.”
As another example, he pointed to an interview he did with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in which he said she “parroted a dumb answer that she was given by other people in the administration.” He added, “That’s not me attacking Sarah Sanders, that’s exposing the truth.”
At the same time he was being hit by the left-leaning hosts of the show for giving Trump defenders a platform, Meghan McCain was coming at Cuomo from the right for letting his “opinion” come through too often. She asked him if CNN has done a good enough job defining the “difference between journalists and opinion-makers.”
“I think it's an important distinction and I think it’s one that's often blurred,” Cuomo said. But at the same time, he explained that since “this administration lies more than anything I have ever seen in public life,” they have to be held to account.
