‘Fancier Word, Same BS’: Anderson Cooper Rips Trump’s ‘Bravado’ Explanation In Classified Docs Case

Anderson Cooper panned former President Donald Trump’s explanation that he was engaged in mere “bravado” when he claimed to a writer he was holding classified material about a potential attack on Iran.

On Monday, CNN aired audio of Trump speaking to a writer working on a memoir with Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff as president. The recording backs up an allegation made in the Department of Justice’s indictment of the former president, who pleaded not guilty to 37 counts in connection with his handling of government documents after leaving office.

In the recording from 2021 after he left office, Trump brags to the writer about having classified information:

TRUMP: Well, with Milley, let me see that. I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look.

[Sounds of paper shuffling]

This was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.

[…]

See, as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.

Initially, Trump claimed the audio somehow exonerated him. But the next day, he claimed he was lying to the writer.

“I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado,” Trump told Semafor and ABC News on board his plane on Tuesday. “I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.”

Cooper slammed Trump’s explanation on Wednesday’s AC360 on CNN.

“When we left you last night, the former president had just floated a new explanation for the tape of him two summers ago apparently sharing a classified plan for attacking Iran, which he was not authorized to have – with people not authorized to see it,” Cooper said. “And that explanation now is, ‘I was just BS-ing people. He didn’t say ‘BS.’ He said it was ‘bravado’ – fancier word, same BS.”

The host aired Trump’s remarks and continued attacking the former president’s explanation.

Watch above via CNN.