On Monday’s broadcast of CBS’ “The Late Show,” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said, “I’ve actually muted the president on Twitter.” And that while he does have people who follow Trump so he knows what the president tweeted, “I just don’t want to have that drama in my life.” Cooper further stated that after his BP oil spill coverage, the Obama White House “stopped talking to me for years.”
While talking about the past weekend, Cooper stated, “I’ve actually muted the president on Twitter.”
He added, “You know when you get annoying people tweeting you, you don’t want to delete because then that tells them you’ve deleted them. So, if you just mute them, they think you’re still following them, and you don’t actually see their tweets.”
He later said, “I have people following him so they tell me — I just don’t want to have that drama in my life.”
Cooper did say that he accepts Trump is president, and “I have great respect for the president. I just don’t need to follow him on Twitter.” He further stated, “I have friends who have mania, I don’t want to be around them all the time. I don’t want them to have my private line and be able to call me. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t want the ups and the downs in my life. I just want to be calm.”
After the subject turned to reporting on Trump’s tweets, Cooper said that he thinks Trump’s tweets are partially “a large distraction.” But that they’re not purely a distraction, because they’re like “a real-time seismograph of the inner workings of the president’s head, and it’s fascinating.”
When the discussion turned to CNN’s coverage, Cooper said, “We’re fair and we’re accurate.”
He added that CNN doesn’t try to get a rise out of Trump. Cooper continued, “I didn’t have a great relationship with the Obama White House. I used to interview President Obama on the campaign trail, before he became president, a couple times as president. I did reporting on the BP oil spill. I spent two months in New Orleans straight, just doing nothing but BP oil spill basically every night, and they — the White House stopped talking to me for years. So, I didn’t get to — I didn’t have a great relationship, I didn’t really have any relationship. I also don’t want to really have a relationship with these people. Like, I interviewed Kellyanne Conway a couple of weeks ago. … And at one point in the interview, she said something to me along the lines of like, you know, we may have to re-think the relationship we have. I was like, we don’t have a relationship. And I don’t — I mean, no offense, and I said like, look, I respect you and stuff, but I don’t want to have a relationship with you. I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to hang out. I don’t believe reporters should be going to like, parties at the White House.”
Cooper added that he did go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner once, and will never go again.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett