‘You Said What You Said!’ Mediaite Owner Dan Abrams Spars With Chris Cuomo Over Story the Site Published About Him

NewsNation host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams had a friendy joust with his network colleague, and old friend, Chris Cuomo on Thursday after Cuomo attacked a Mediaite article for factually reporting on his own words.

The article in question – “Chris Cuomo Says He’d Consider Voting For Trump: ‘I Am Always Open’” – correctly reported that Cuomo would be “open” to voting for Trump despite the fact that he is not very fond of the former president.

At the end of his show on Thursday, Cuomo aired a screenshot of the Mediaite article and complained, “They didn’t even call me because they don’t want to screw up the headline. They don’t want to screw up the clickbait, and that’s the agenda.”

Immediately after making the dig, Cuomo then handed off to Abrams.

“I’m so glad that you put that up, alright? Put it back up. Put up the headline again from Mediaite, which is a website that I happen to own,” responded Abrams, to which Cuomo said, “No, don’t give Mediaite the attention. Don’t put it up. Don’t put it up.”

“It does feel like you’re kind of like backing off of what you said,” continued Abrams:

You were right at the top of the show when you said more context, right? Your point was that you were critical of Donald Trump in other parts of the interview, but you were asked a very specific question, which is, “So you’re open to a Trump vote?” And your response was, “I’m always open.” And then you went further than that. You even said, “And I’ll tell you this, people say, oh, B.S. you’ve never voted for a Republican in your life. Wrong. Not only have I, the first vote I ever casted was for a Republican.” Your point was that you’re open. Was it not? I mean, is that unfair?

Cuomo argued, “The point is that everybody should be open,” before noting that Trump “made life very hard when he weaponized me, went after my family.”

He went on:

Am I open? Yes, I’m open. I then followed it by saying – the part that you mysteriously missed – where I said, “If Donald Trump is banking on me for re-election, he’s got trouble.” Why? Because he’s not my guy and I’ve said it a million different times and ways, but it’s not my place to tell people to vote for. Your outlet, and a lot of other ones, did what you often criticize, which is they didn’t contact me. They didn’t want context.

Abrams questioned, “Wait, why do they need to contact you? What is there to contact you about? You said what you said in the interview. It speaks for itself. What do they have to contact you about?”

Cuomo insisted, “I never said I would consider voting for Trump. I said ‘I’m open,'” to which Abrams replied, “That is a distinction without a difference!”

Cuomo protested, “When you are going to cover what somebody said, you call if you’re a responsible reporter and say, ‘Hey, did you say this? And what did you mean when you said this?'”

“What do you mean, ‘Did you do this?’ You’re not denying you said it,” observed Abrams. “You don’t call when someone makes a comment on their show. You don’t have to say, ‘Did you say it?’ You know they said it.”

Cuomo continued to maintain that the headline was “clickbait” and “grossly out of context,” before claiming that “if it were a trial” Mediaite would “get massacred on this.”

Abrams emphatically disagreed.

Watch above via NewsNation.