After former President Donald Trump accused CNN anchor Anderson Cooper of using a commerical break to coach E. Jean Carroll to be "more hostile" toward him during a recent interview on the network, Cooper showed the unedited footage of the pre-recorded interview that instantly proved Trump wrong.
During a recent press conference at Trump Tower, Trump claimed Cooper had directed Carroll—who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s and won a judgment that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation—to speak ill of him.
He said:
"Then there was an Anderson Cooper interview where she said essentially, no, he didn’t rape me… In the Anderson Cooper tape, it’s an interview of [Carroll] and Cooper says something to the effect, ‘Did he rape you? Did he rape you?’…"
"She gave a very good answer for me, but a bad answer for CNN for Anderson and he said, we’re going to a commercial break right now. Then she came back from commercial break and she was much more hostile."
“But this man wouldn’t let us use the tape or the proper questions having to do with the tape. Wouldn’t let us, the judge, Judge Kaplan wouldn’t let it be used. We wanted to get the outtakes."
"In other words, what did Anderson Cooper talk to her about during that intermission for a commercial that he called for immediately?”
Cooper fired back not long afterward—and he had the receipts.
Cooper noted that Trump made a similar statement during his deposition for the trial in which Carroll accused him of sexual assault. In the October 19, 2022, deposition transcript, Trump stated:
“If you watch Anderson Cooper’s interview with her where she was promoting a really crummy book, you will see that it is a complete scam. She changed her story from beginning to end after the commercial break to suit the purposes of CNN and Andy Cooper.”
He responded to Trump's conspiracy claim by airing the complete footage of both the interview and the behind-the-scenes moments, noting that "I normally don't respond when Trump says something about me" but said he wanted to show that Trump's statements are "demonstrably false":
“So the former president seems to be suggesting that something we discussed, or that I discussed with E. Jean Carroll during a four-minute-long commercial break that you would have been watching at home, made Ms. Carroll change her tone toward him."
“The problem with this conspiracy theory is that this interview was actually pre-recorded, and we had to pre-record a toss to a commercial break, and then welcome viewers back after a commercial break so that the entire two parts of the interview would fit into my show that night." …
"Because it’s pre-recorded, you don’t have to sit there during a commercial break. You just take a few seconds. You make sure the control room is still recording. You welcome viewers back as if you’ve just come out of a commercial break, and you continue with the interview.”
“And that’s exactly what I do with Jean Carroll, and I know this because we have the tape… And if you don’t believe me, here’s the raw, unedited video of what was actually being recorded, and you will hear exactly what I said in the few seconds it took me to resume the interview.”
Cooper then referenced the unedited video, which shows him briefly pausing after laughing at a comment made by Carroll to check on the producer and crew. Moments later, he resumes the interview without any disruption, continuing the segment as usual. Cooper did not speak with Carroll during the break as Trump alleged.
Cooper concluded:
"So that was the entire break so when Donald Trump said during the break I was talking to E. Jean Carroll, you just saw the break and that weird look I have is how I talk to my control room when I'm saying, 'Okay, we good? We coming back? Okay.'"
"I'm talking to a producer who's talking to me in the control room in my earpiece right here, making sure that we're good on time, that we're still recording, and I can immediately resume the interview. That's what happened in the break of this interview that Trump was again talking about today."
Many joined Cooper in calling out Trump's latest lie.
Trump was in New York to sit in Manhattan's federal appeals court, where a three-judge panel listened to oral arguments in Trump's appeal of the first civil trial verdict, which found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Prior to the release of her 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, Carroll wrote in New York Magazine that Trump had sexually assaulted her in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996 in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City.
In May 2023, following a lengthy legal process, a jury ruled Trump was responsible for the sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages. Trump's remarks regarding Carroll formed a central part of her original defamation lawsuit. That jury concluded that he defamed her by branding her a liar and dismissing the entire incident as a hoax.
Carroll would go on to sue Trump again. The judge overseeing this second case said its purpose was not to reopen the question of whether the assault during the 1990s took place since that had already been decided.
The primary task for this jury was to determine the appropriate consequences for Trump's persistent dissemination of false defamatory statements. Additionally, they were tasked with assessing the compensation owed to Carroll for the emotional distress resulting from years of being targeted by the former President and his supporters (leading her to keep a gun by her bedside) and the damage to her reputation as a journalist reliant on trust and factual reporting.
In the end, the jury granted Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, affirming that Trump's actions were malicious. They also awarded her $18.3 million for the emotional harm and harm to her reputation for a grand total of $83.3 million in total damages.
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