"Well, a coordinated smear campaign is underway against both Robert Mueller and James Comey, a joint effort by the president's supporters and Fox News, two groups which are increasingly indistinguishable from one another," Anderson Cooper said on CNN Thursday night. "The smear campaign includes a number of claims that are just plain false — the whole thing's frankly kind of weird, so stay with me here."
Cooper began with the quickly debunked claim by President Trump's former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski that Comey had been in charge of the FBI during the Boston Marathon bombing — a story that, when confronted, he changed to something about Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. Lewandoski was just trying to "grasp at another straw in this bale of B.S.," Cooper said, and he traced the Bulger thread back to Alan Dershowitz, who was talking about Mueller. Dershowitz walked back his Mueller claim, but "of course, by then, the genie was out of the bottle, and the president's supporters, hellbent on smearing the Russian investigation, have taken said genie and run with it," he added. "And you know what that means — enter Sean Hannity." You can watch Cooper walk through and pull down these two allegations below. Peter Weber
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warmingUnder the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
House posts lewd Epstein note attributed to TrumpSpeed Read The estate of Jeffrey Epstein turned over the infamous 2003 birthday note from President Donald Trump
-
Supreme Court allows 'roving' race-tied ICE raidsSpeed Read The court paused a federal judge's order barring agents from detaining suspected undocumented immigrants in LA based on race
-
South Korea to fetch workers detained in Georgia raidSpeed Read More than 300 South Korean workers detained in an immigration raid at a Hyundai plant will be released
-
DC sues Trump to end Guard 'occupation'Speed Read D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb argues that the unsolicited military presence violates the law
-
RFK Jr. faces bipartisan heat in Senate hearingSpeed Read The health secretary defended his leadership amid CDC turmoil and deflected questions about the restricted availability of vaccines
-
White House defends boat strike as legal doubts mountSpeed Read Experts say there was no legal justification for killing 11 alleged drug-traffickers
-
Epstein accusers urge full file release, hint at own listspeed read A rally was organized by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who are hoping to force a vote on their Epstein Files Transparency Act
-
Court hands Harvard a win in Trump funding battleSpeed Read The Trump administration was ordered to restore Harvard's $2 billion in research grants
