CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Donald Trump Jr. for ‘tweeting lies’ with old hurricane photo

Sept. 18--At the end of his broadcast Monday night, CNN host Anderson Cooper said he rarely responds to online conspiracy theorists, but made a special case to rebut social media posts made by President Trump's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

"I debated whether I should even respond tonight to the president's son," Cooper said on AC360 in a 9-minute segment to close out his broadcast. "I know he considers himself an outdoorsman and pays a lot of money to be led to wildlife in Africa that he then kills. But I'm not sure if he's actually been to a hurricane or a flood. I didn't see him down in North Carolina over the last few days helping out, lending a hand, but I'm sure he was doing something important besides just tweeting lies."

On Sunday, Trump Jr. shared a photo that made its way across social media over the weekend that featured Cooper reporting from waist-high water. Assuming the photo was from CNN's live coverage of Hurricane Florence, Trump Jr. used it to once again attack the network's credibility, echoing the battle his father has waged with the network over it's coverage of his presidency.

"And they wonder why people don't trust the media," Trump Jr. wrote.

There's just one problem: the photo is from 2008, and shows Cooper in Texas during CNN's coverage of Hurricane Ike. The photo of Cooper was shared widely due to the fact his cameraman is standing on higher ground, giving the appearance CNN was trying to over-hype the storm's impact.

"I've been covering hurricanes for about 14 years, and it really does make me sad that anyone would believe that I would try to fake something or overly dramatize a disaster," Cooper said, before showing 10-year-old clips revealing him reporting that the flood waters were actually receding and pointing out that while there was a lower level of water on the roadway, the water was much deeper just feet from the shoulder.

Cooper also pointed out that the crew member pictured in the photo, Doug Thomas, was a longtime CNN colleague who died in September 2017. "And we miss him every day," Cooper noted.

Trump Jr. was far from the only public official linked to the Trump administration to share the photo context-free as recovery operations continue following Hurricane Florence. Lynne Patton, a senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, shared the photo on her Instagram along with the hashtag "#FakeNews." Gavin Smith, the former Deputy Director of Communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, also shared the image, writing, "Apparently #HurricaneFlorence wasn't devastating enough for @CNN's @andersoncooper -- so he had to exaggerate for his live shot."

"Look, I don't expect the president's son to ever admit he was wrong, or one of the president's former advisers or frankly anyone else who's retweeted these pictures," Cooper said. "But I at least thought that they and you should know the truth."

Watch:

On Tuesday morning, Trump Jr. responded to the segment by piggy-backing on claims made by conservative pundits that the president's son didn't explicitly claim the photo was from Florence. "If you're going to spend 10 minutes crying about a meme you may want to make sure you're actually right," Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.

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