CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Randi Kaye have fired back after Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called Kaye an “absolutely horrible reporter.”
Trump accused CNN of “terrible, disgusting reporting” for showing empty seats at a Trump rally in South Carolina. In an interview Thursday on CNN’s New Day, Trump suggested the “room was full, every seat was full” until Trump took the stage, and then “everybody rushed forward” and stood in the front of the room.
On AC360 Thursday evening, Anderson Cooper played Trump’s comments and added “everything you heard Donald Trump just say is wrong,” introducing a package from Kaye that detailed–and defended–her reporting.
“For the record…the empty seats were empty because they were never occupied,” Kaye said, adding that it wasn’t just CNN that noticed the empty seats. Kaye showed headlines from The New York Times and The Washington Post (“Donald Trump says he didn’t speak to a half-empty room. But he did.”). The Post fact-checked Trump, and concluded “CNN’s assessment appears to have been the correct one.”