Anderson Cooper just dragged Florida’s attorney general over her post-Orlando LGBTQ hypocrisy, and it was glorious

By Rafi Schwartz  |  June 14, 2016 | 8:28pm
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Anderson Cooper became the toast of Twitter on Tuesday after confronting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi over her woeful record on LGBTQ rights.

Bondi has never been shy about her opposition to same-sex marriage, for instance. In 2014 she claimed that recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states would “impose significant public harm.”

So, after Bondi suddenly began acting like a champion of the LGBTQ community in the wake of the Orlando massacre, Cooper called her out, gloriously, in an interview in Orlando.

“I talked to a lot of gay and lesbian people here yesterday who are not fans of yours,” he said. “And who said that they thought you were being a hypocrite, that you for years have…basically gone after [LGBTQ] people. Do you really think you’re a champion of the gay community?”

Bondi appeared visibly flustered, and pivoted to a constitutional argument regarding Florida state laws, rather than address Cooper’s question directly. But Cooper didn’t let up.

“I will say I have never really seen you talk about gays and lesbians and transgender people in a positive way until now,” he said pointedly. “I read your Twitter history for a last year and you were tweeting about, you know, National Dog Month and National Shelter dog appreciation day or adopt a shelter dog day. You know, it is Gay Pride Month. You never even tweeted about Gay Pride Month.”

“Well actually,” Bondi tried to explain, “if you look at my website now, we have hands clasped together, all different-colored, rainbow-hands.”

Cooper was less than impressed.

You can find all of Fusion’s coverage of the Orlando shootings here.

 
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