Donald Trump Jr. Tried to Start a Fight with Anderson Cooper and Immediately Lost

Luke Darby
Updated

Donald Trump Jr. seems to struggle at most things. Even on Twitter, where his father thrives like some pollution-resistant carp, the president's oldest son routinely stumbles into dumb, easily avoidable self-owns.

Over the weekend, Trump Jr. retweeted a photo of Anderson Cooper, up to his waist in flood water during CNN's hurricane coverage while a cameraman stands in ankle-deep water. While his tweet linked to a Breitbart article about CNN's ratings, it's clearly in line with his and his father's repeated attacks on news outlets in general and CNN in particular, which they often accuse of making up news. (The photo was also posted by a HUD official, asking "If the media will lie about this what else are they lying about?")

But on Monday, Anderson Cooper fired back, saying on his show:

"I debated whether I should even respond tonight to the president’s son. I know he considers himself an outdoorsman and pays a lot of money to be led to wildlife in Africa that he then kills. But I’m not sure if he’s actually been to a hurricane or a flood. I didn’t see him down in North Carolina over the last few days helping out, lending a hand, but I’m sure he was doing something important besides just tweeting lies."

He continued, explaining that the photographed segment was actually from 2008, and was meant to show that floodwater can be deceptively deep, and it's difficult and dangerous to try to navigate on foot. (Writer's note: Having grown up in Louisiana and lived through multiple hurricanes, this checks out. You can't see a damn ditch when it's underwater.) Cooper concluded: “I don’t expect the president’s son to ever admit that he was wrong or one of the president’s advisers or frankly anyone else who’s retweeted any of these pictures. But I at least thought that they and you should know the truth.”

Not knowing when to just play dead, Trump Jr. took a break from retweeting Mike Huckabee and James O'Keefe to reply to Cooper:

Trump Jr. is either being deliberately misleading here (posting a picture of a hurricane during a hurricane kinda invites an immediate connection) or he's too dumb to realize what he's saying. Either way, he'd do well to learn not to punch above his weight class, though that doesn't really leave him with many options.