CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Wednesday
responded to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's claims that an
interview he conducted with her was edited to make her look bad.
While the interview was broadcast live
and in its entirety, a clip released on the web was edited.
In the interview, Cooper questioned
Bondi's commitment to the LGBT community in the wake of Sunday's
attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando.
“I saw you the other day saying that
anyone who attacks the LGBT community – our LGBT community, you
said – will be gone after to the full extend of the law,” Cooper
said during the interview. “I talked to a lot of gay and lesbian
people here yesterday who are not fans of yours and said that they
thought you were being a hypocrite. That you for years have fought –
you've basically gone after gay people – said that in court that
gay people simply by fighting for marriage equality were trying to do
harm to the people of Florida.”
Bondi reiterated previous claims that
she was doing her job in defending the Florida Constitution.
Bondi told Fox News host Steve
Darcy that Cooper had treated her unfairly and accused him of
inciting “anger and hatred.”
“[H]e just flipped on me. You know,
there's a time and place for everything. If he wants to ask me about
doing my job defending the constitution, but to incite anger and
hatred was not the time nor the place in front of a hospital,”
Bondi said. “[T]hat's a time for us to come together.”
“He basically mocked me for saying”
that we should “just focus on unity and love,” she added.
On Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper
responded.
“She's either mistaken or she's not
telling the truth. Let's be real here. Ms. Bondi's big complaint
seems to be that I asked in the wake of a massacre of gay and lesbian
citizens about her new statements about the gay community and about
her old ones,” Cooper told his audience.
“For the record, my interview was not
filled with any anger. My job is to hold people accountable. And if
on Sunday a politician is talking about love and about embracing 'our
LGBT community,' I don't think it's unfair to look at their record to
see if they have ever actually spoken that way publicly before, which
I've never heard her say,” he added.