Perhaps shockingly, Anderson Cooper hosted former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on AC:360 Thursday night. Less shockingly, the two clashed almost instantly — and the debate devolved into a garbled mess by the end.

The conflict began when Cooper tried to get an answer from Bannon on a generic question.

“In general, is it okay for a president, any president, to ask a foreign leader of a country fighting a war against our adversaries in need of aid to do a political favor and investigate his political opponent and withhold aid over it?”

Bannon told Cooper “your premise is wrong.” He then claimed that President Donald Trump sought to have Ukraine investigate corruption as a whole in his phone call with that nation’s president — a call on which he directly asked for Joe Biden to be looked into.

“I don’t buy the assumption — see, you have this premise that it’s about a political opponent,” Bannon said. “What they’re investigating is the corruption overall—”

Cooper interjected

“Oh, come on, give me a break,” Cooper shot back. “You’re a smart guy. You know very well that that’s just bull.”

He added, “If you’re concerned about corruption in Ukraine, I’ve been there. There’s a lot of corruption. The only example of corruption in the Ukraine the president can say is Joe Biden, the guy he happens to be running against?”

Bannon replied by noting that Trump also asked Ukraine to look into the 2016 campaign — a reference to the debunked Crowdstrike conspiracy theory. Cooper promptly called him on this. Bannon then teased further information to come — completely avoiding Cooper’s question.

“We’re going to get in this process, you’re going get to see all the information,” he said. “It will all be laid out.”

Watch above, via CNN.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2N5zViX