Chris Cuomo called out his former CNN colleague Anderson Cooper for looking like a “fool” earlier this week when he insulted former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on air.
During a spirited back-and-forth about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s government spending task force DOGE on Tuesday’s episode of AC360, Cooper told Sununu—a Republican who was defending DOGE—not to “put words in my mouth.” When Sununu kept at it, Cooper said, “Don’t be a d---.”
Later in the segment, Cooper apologized for being rude. Sununu laughed it off, saying he’d grown up with seven brothers and sister and, as a former governor, had been called far worse.
But Cuomo—who said Cooper is the “best in the business”—thought it was below the veteran news anchor.
“It didn’t bother the Gov,” Cuomo, who was fired by CNN in December 2021, said during Wednesday’s episode of his NewsNation show CUOMO. “Sure, [Sununu] had brothers, but it also made Coop look like a fool.”
“And when he surrenders to this ugliness, you know things are out of hand,” Cuomo continued. “He knows why said it. He said it because that’s what the left is demanding these days, a muscularity. You got to be mean back to them.”
Later in Cuomo’s show, he brought on Sununu and asked about the incident. The former governor said that in his head he’d had about six comebacks—which he thought were “really funny”—but had tried to keep it somewhat serious since they were on CNN.
“If anything, I said, ‘Oh, this is great. We’re having a political argument like me and my buddy would over a beer,’” he said. “You’re just kind of giving it to me and I’m giving it back… he’s a great guy. I don’t take any offense.”
Cuomo, however, was adamant that journalists need to “fight this temptation” to “dehumanize” people, regardless of the political climate.
He acknowledged that Cooper was a “classy guy” who apologized to Sununu even though nobody was making him do it.
But “[Cooper] has fallen for what’s going around, which is that insults are the counter,” he said. “But they’re not. Insults are not a proxy for better insights on how to test power and how to govern.”
