CNN Provides Dubious Explanation of Controversial Anderson Cooper Tweet

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper adjusts his earpiece during a commercial break while moderating a Democratic presidential debate sponsored by CNN at Wynn Las Vegas on Oct. 13, 2015. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A day after a controversial Tweet was sent to President Donald Trump from the account of CNN host Anderson Cooper, the network issued a statement in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

The Tweet posted by Cooper’s account had called Trump a “pathetic loser” and suggested Trump was lying.

The Tweet was in response to a Tweet by Trump in which the President said that he had originally endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primaries, because Roy Moore would not be able to win a general election. Moore lost the Senate race on Tuesday to Democrat Doug Jones.

In fact, what Trump said in his Dec. 13 Tweet is exactly what he had said on Sept. 22 during a rally he attended for Strange in Huntsville Alabama, as reported in a Tweet by a local reporter.

Anderson’s inaccurate and insulting Tweet comes as CNN has found itself in hot water over a number of inaccurate stories.

The fiercely anti-Trump network was forced to issue a correction last Friday after it had reported that the Trump campaign was given advance access to emails obtained by Wikileaks. In the embarrassing correction, CNN said that the email to Trump offering access to the Wikileak emails was actually sent after the emails had been publicly released.

In response to Cooper’s Tweet, CNN initially said that “someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS.”

Hours later CNN issued a statement to Washington Post reporter Erik Wemple.

Geolocation tools confirm that the tweet in question was not sent from Anderson Cooper’s phone. Anderson was in Washington, and we have proof the tweet was sent from New York, from a phone belonging to his assistant.

His assistant inadvertently left his phone unlocked and unattended at the gym early this morning, and someone took the phone and sent the tweet. His assistant, who has worked with Anderson for more than a decade, is the only other person with access to Anderson’s Twitter account. The explanation, however, raised a lot of questions on Twitter.

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