Anderson Cooper Slaps Back At Pam Bondi's Complaints Of "Edited" Interview

After Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi called into a friend's radio to complain about being "ambushed" in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper took to the airwaves to set the record straight.

I love that Anderson presents the pre-interview notes on the air.

Truth be told, it doesn't take an Anderson Cooper to make Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi look bad. She's been doing that all on her own for a long time.

For years Bondi worked fervently to keep equal rights, like marriage equality, from "the gays." So, when she spends her time on national TV these past few days (in an effort to bolster her political career) pretending she's some great ally of the LGBT community, this is exactly what happens.

Here's how Anderson responded to Bondi's claims that her interview was unfair, and that it was "edited."

“She’s either mistaken or she’s not telling the truth,” the CNN host said on his show, Anderson Cooper 360. “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.”

“For the record, my interview was not filled with any anger. I was respectful before the interview, I was respectful during the interview and I was respectful after the interview. I don’t know Pam Bondi personally, she seems like a nice person actually. I don’t think she has hate in her heart. But what I think doesn’t matter, its my job to hold people accountable. If on Sunday a politician was talking love and embracing quote ‘our LGBT community’ I don’t think it’s unfair to look at their record and see if they have actually ever spoken that way publicly before which I never heard her say.

"The fact is, Attorney General Bondi signed off on a 2014 federal court brief that claimed married gay people would pose ‘significant public harm’. Harm. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money. Gay and straight taxpayers money, trying to keep gays and lesbians from getting the right to marry. Now look, good people can and do disagree on that issue. everyone has a right to their own opinion thank goodness. But Ms. Bondi is championing right now her efforts to help survivors but the very right which allows gay spouses to bury their dead loved ones – that’s a right that would not exist if Ms Bondi had had her way. I think it’s fair to ask her about that. There is an irony in that."

And for the record, here is the entire interview segment that began this whole debate: