QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why is CNN’s Anderson Cooper promising to protect Dems during debate?
CNN’s Anderson Cooper will moderate the first Democratic presidential debate this week, and unlike the previous Republican debate hosted by CNN, Cooper said he won’t be encouraging confrontations between the candidates.
“I’m always uncomfortable with that notion of setting people up in order to kind of promote some sort of a face off,” Cooper said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” “Look, these are all serious people*. This is a serious debate. They want to talk about the issues and I want to give them an opportunity to do that.”
Forgetting the notion that Hillary and Bernie et al are “serious people,” (and by inference, Cooper’s shot at the GOP POTUS candidates), but of course he wants to protect his fellow Democrats:
CNN host Anderson Cooper, who is set to moderate tonight’s Democratic debate, was listed as a “notable past member” the Clinton Global Initiative’s website along with a number of other big name journalists:
The list includes: CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour, Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, NBC’s Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw, New York Times‘s Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Yahoo’s Katie Couric, The Economist‘s Matthew Bishop, and Financial Times‘ Lionel Barber.
The Clinton Foundation later told Mediaite that none of these journalists were asked to pay the $20,000 membership fee required of members. However, it’s safe to say that access to big name journalists was a key selling point for paying Clinton Global Initiative members. In a nutshell, Anderson Cooper helped Hillary Clinton raise money, and now he’s presented as an impartial moderator for tonight’s debate.
H.L. Mencken once said that “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” But then, nobody would confuse either man for the other. Or CNN as being a first-rate source of news.
* Alas, Cooper does his best to dissuade viewers of the notion that he qualifies to be called that himself.