Mollie Hemingway rips Anderson Cooper for 'condescending' message after CNN town hall
The Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway provides analysis of the crisis at the southern border after Title 42 ended and discusses the reaction to CNN's town hall with former President Trump.
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, sounded off on the liberal outrage over former President Trump's CNN town hall after Anderson Cooper issued a "condescending" message to his viewers that Trump could be re-elected. On "The Brian Kilmeade Show" Friday, Hemingway said Cooper's remarks are a reminder that the left has been silencing the former president.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: That is the funniest thing I've heard in a really long time. It's so condescending to his audience too – like, of course, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination is someone that any legitimate news organization should be dealing with quite regularly – that you have to gently talk to your audience and explain why that's significant. Or like, how cloistered are they that they don't know people who like Donald Trump? There are tens of millions of people who are super fans of this guy. And if you don't know any of them, you're living in a really sheltered, naive place. But it was a reminder of how effective the left has been at silencing not just Trump, but a lot of conservative voices. Where they just keep them from being able to talk. And then, it's been years since we'd seen Donald Trump in that kind of environment. And it was had this weird effect of being, like, really refreshing and interesting.
CNN's Anderson Cooper swiped the Republican audience that attended the network's Trump town hall. (Screenshot/CNN)
Cooper was taken to task by fellow liberals on Thursday after offering a widely criticized "straw-man argument" about the far-left network’s decision to air a town hall with former President Trump.
The polarizing town hall Wednesday has angered liberals ranging from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to rank-and-file employees and prominent media members, who had their knives out for Cooper. Cooper castigated Trump as a liar and called his words disturbing, but also scolded viewers not to retreat to their information silos and pretend the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination didn't exist.
Former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann blasted Cooper’s comments as "pathetic" before taking a personal shot at the CNN anchor.
"This is really pathetic from @AndersonCooper. He's scolding the audience for saying CNN shouldn't have ceded editorial control to Trump; insulting them by saying maybe they hadn't paid attention to what he's done since leaving office," Olbermann wrote. "He remains the most overrated man in TV news."
Fox News' Brian Flood and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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