Along with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, CNN’s silver fox will moderate the second presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Sunday, Oct. 9. Since Trump will inevitably say the moderators were biased toward Clinton if they lodge difficult question at him or he just utterly fails on stage, it’s important to ask: Is Anderson Cooper a Democrat? Political journalists typically keep their personal ideologies private, but here’s what we know.
It’s not just a small hunch that Trump will claim Cooper was out to get him — he already made statements alleging the anchor and CNN at large were skewed toward his Democratic opponent before the debate even kicked off. “I don’t think Anderson Cooper should be a moderator because Anderson Cooper works for CNN and over the last couple of days, I’ve seen how Anderson Cooper behaves,” he told The Washington Post in September. “He’ll be very biased, very biased. I don’t think he should be a moderator. I’ll participate, but I don’t think he should be a moderator. CNN is the Clinton News Network and Anderson Cooper, I don’t think he can be fair.”
However, Cooper hasn’t endorsed either candidate and claims to try his best to treat both political parties the same.
Cooper has often been accused of being liberal, but that’s just because Republicans often throw that out into the world when asked a difficult question or criticized. When Republican Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho accused him of favoring Democrats in 2013, he fired back: “This is the way it works in journalism. When you’re not on Fox News, you get contentious interviews. When you’re not on MSNBC and a liberal, you get contentious interviews. My job is to ask you questions that are different than you think, just as my next guest, who’s a Democrat, I’m gonna ask the same kinds of questions.”
Cooper has reportedly only ever made one political donation, and it was actually to a Republican candidate. The website Hollowverse claims he once gave $250 to an unnamed GOP candidate, but the records cited are no longer available, so you can take or leave that information.
He’s a complicated person to figure out because on the one hand, he hails from the wealthy Vanderbilt family and is a practicing Christian, but on the other hand, he’s openly gay and seems to be more liberal on social issues. So, it’s possible he’s independent or identifies as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The only truly safe assumption to make is that he won’t be voting for Trump in November, despite remaining an impartial journalist.
Original by Lauren Holter @laurenholter
