One of former President Donald Trump's latest conspiracy theories is that E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for sexual abuse and defamation, was coached by CNN's Anderson Cooper when the pair went off air during a commercial break during an interview.
It prompted Cooper to take a rare moment out of his programming to address this accusation directly — which, he said, was based on Trump apparently not understanding how commercial blocks during prerecorded interviews work.
"So the former president seems to be suggesting that something we discussed, or that I discussed, with E. Jean Carroll during a four-minute long commercial break that you would have been watching at home, made Ms. Carroll change her tone toward him," said Cooper. "Not sure her tone actually changed after the second block of the interview, but that's beside the point."
"The problem with this conspiracy theory is that this interview was actually pre-recorded and we had to pre-record a toss to a commercial break and then welcome viewers back after the commercial break, so that the entire two parts of the interview would fit into my show that night," said Cooper.
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When a news anchor does this, he explained, "You don't sit there for the entire four minutes of the commercial break with the guest just waiting to then come back to the show. Because it's pre-recorded, you don't have to sit there during commercial break. You just take a few seconds, you make sure that control room is still recording, you welcome viewers back as if you've just come out of a commercial break, and you continue with the interview.
"So while Trump is currently suggesting, I sat through a commercial break on live TV with E. Jean Carroll telling her to be angry or whatever, we actually just paused in a pre-recorded interview for a few seconds," said Cooper.
"And if you don't believe me, here's the raw, unedited video of what was actually being recorded." He played the footage, which showed Cooper took a couple seconds to speak with his producer and then immediately went right back to the interview, with nothing else in between.
Trump, who is trying to appeal the more than $80 million judgment against him in the Carroll case, delivered an angry rant in a press conference in New York in which he made the accusations against Cooper.
He also, unprompted, brought up accusations made against him by two other women who say he sexually assaulted them.
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