Anderson Cooper Hits Donald Trump Jr. for Spreading an 'Idiotic' Conspiracy Theory

Trump Jr.is correct that Cooper did wrongly state that the president's son explicitly sold the picture as a Hurricane Florence shot.

On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out a photo of Cooper standing in waist-deep water during a hurricane, with a caption suggesting that the CNN anchor was lying to make the president look bad. Cooper, who generally doesn't respond to such conspiracy theories, made a decision to answer Trump Jr. for his "idiotic" claims. "But I at least thought that they and you should know the truth".

Trump tweeted: "It's a shame that CNN's ratings are down 41 percent".

"For those who think I was kneeling or faking the water level or making it look worse than it was or standing in some sort of a hole, this is an area where people had been trapped on the roofs of their homes by water", Cooper explained during his show on CNN.

"I've covered hurricanes for about 14 years and it really does make me sad to think that anyone would think that I would try to fake something or overly dramatize a disaster", he said. Even President Trump's own son Donald Trump Jr. posted these photos and commentary, apparently without doing any research whatsoever in order to confirm what he was alleging. "The idea that I am kneeling in water to make it look deep is frankly, idiotic", Cooper said, before playing a clip showing him walking into the deeper water.

Cooper said that in recent days, conspiracy theorists including President Trump's son, have shared a photo from his coverage of 2008's Hurricane Ike and falsely claimed that it shows him exaggerating the depths of floodwaters in Hurricane Florence. Cooper was trying to stay out of the way of rescue vehicles in the aftermath of the devastating hurricane, while pointing out several times how the water was much shallower on the road right by his side. Wearing waders and clutching a microphone, Cooper stands near a patch of submerged vegetation in waist-high floodwaters as a cameraman looks on.

Unsurprisingly, people on social media slammed Trump Jr. for spreading lies about the veteran journalist. He pointed out that the cameraman who appears in the photo was Doug Thomas, a CNN audio technician who died in September 2017.