Anderson Cooper Rebuts Trump’s E. Jean Carroll ‘Conspiracy Theory’ on Air

When former President Donald Trump attacks Anderson Cooper, the longtime anchor usually doesn’t react. But on Friday, he brought the receipt.

Trump, who was convicted of sexually abusing and insulting E. Jean Carroll, alleged on Friday that Cooper guided the writer and advice columnist to make rape allegations against him in a 2019 interview.

“There was an interview with Anderson Cooper where she essentially said, ‘No, he didn’t rape me,’” Trump told reporters in New York City. “He said, ‘We’re going to go on a commercial break right now.’ Then she came back from the commercial break and was even more hostile.”

Trump, who is in the United States to appeal a $5 million judgment in a civil suit, argued that Judge Lewis Kaplan “refused” to allow his lawyers to introduce “interim footage” of the CNN interview into evidence to find out what Cooper said to Carroll during a break.

“This is not the first time that Trump has suggested there was some nefarious plot to manipulate E. Jean Carroll into saying something,” Cooper said on his “360” show Friday after showing footage of Trump’s Friday press conference. “He actually brought it up in his deposition for trial.”

The reporter called Trump’s claims “patently false” before playing clips of his interview with Carroll before and after the commercial.

“The problem with this conspiracy theory,” he said, “is that this interview was actually pre-taped. We had to pre-taped the pitch during the commercial break, and then welcome the audience back after the commercial break so that the two entire parts of the interview could fit on my show.”

“When Trump says he sat down on air with E. Jean Carroll during a commercial break and told her to get angry or something like that, we actually just paused for a few seconds in a pre-recorded interview.”

The raw footage of the interview Cooper played next shows the host ending the first interview block, asking the producer, “How are you?” before resuming the interview a few seconds later.

But Cooper reminded viewers early in the show that Trump has little interest in evidence or courtesy.

“I don’t usually react when Trump says something about me. What’s the point? He called me a girl’s name recently, like a third-grade gay joke,” Cooper said. “I think he called me Allison or Ashley Cooper, I can’t remember.”

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or National Sexual Violence Resource Center website.