Grilled Cohen

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Anderson Cooper Calls Democratic Rep a Hypocrite for Nazi Rhetoric

By Don Irvine | January 20, 2011

Anderson Cooper took Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen to task for comparing Republicans to Nazi’s on the House floor.


Cooper pointed out that the Democrats have been critical of the right when they used Nazi imagery to describe President Obama and wondered why Cohen thought it was okay for him to mention Nazi’s when describing Republicans.

He also noted that the National Jewish Democratic Council has said that Cohen’s comments are abusive Holocaust rhetoric and that it is never acceptable to invoke the Holocaust to make a political point.

But Cohen said that he didn’t think he did compare the Republicans to the Nazi’s and he certainly didn’t intend to.

Yet during the discussion Cohen repeatedly compared the Republicans to Joseph Goebbels and his tactics.

Cooper also read the following from a recent article Cohen had written for Roll Call:

Reckless and hateful speech often has a terrible human cost. If the horrific events in Arizona are not enough to modulate our public discourse, it is likely there will be more violence, more deaths.

Cohen then admitted that maybe his comments didn’t advance civility per se, but telling lies in uncivil and somebody has to stand up to the lies that are being told.

Cooper gave Cohen ample opportunity to disassociate himself from the Nazi remarks and a comparison he made on the radio of the KKK and the Tea Party but the congressman was determined to explain why his words were being misinterpreted though Cooper to his credit was buying none of it.

At the end of the interview Cohen showed just how arrogant he is by telling Cooper that “I won’t say it again, but I was right.”

It would have been very easy for Cooper to go easy on Cohen and ignore the hypocrisy of what he said especially in light of the Democrats and the mainstream media’s push to blame conservative rhetoric for causing the shooting in Tucson.

Instead Cooper grilled Cohen and did his journalistic duty which is refreshing especially coming from him and CNN.