When many Americans find themselves at a loss navigating a constant stream of “fake news,” we should be grateful when a reporter like CNN’s Anderson Cooper has well armed himself with the facts, and doesn’t hesitate to cite them.
In his recent interview of Rod Blagojevich, Cooper diligently refutes the Governor of Chicago’s defense of his own criminal record. The men’s tempers run hot, culminating when Copper summarizes Blagojevich’s argument as “just bullshit”- on live T.V.
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As Cooper points out, (several times over the course of the interview) in 2011 Blagojevich was convicted on corruption charges by a trial of his peers, a conviction that held up through not one, but two, failed appeals. Recently, President Trump granted Blagojavich executive clemency.
Blagojevich opens his interview by claiming to have been a “political prisoner.”
Cooper counters, “Wait a minute, you’re a political prisoner? Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner. Political prisoners have no due process, and are unjustly jailed.
Naturally, Blagojevich then tries to further parallel himself with Nelson Mandela, as if to suggest that because the anti-apartheid activist was unjustly jailed in South Africa in the 1960s, it is somehow more plausable that he, Blagojavich, a white man in modern America, fell victim to “corrupt prosecuters.”
In Blagojavich’s own words: “I bet if you were to ask Nelson Mandela whether he thought it was fair in the early ‘60s in South Africa, he would say what I’m saying today.”
Blagojevich continued to claim that the prosecution purposely excluded from court proceedings wiretapped recordings of his conversations that would prove his innocence.
Cooper argues that the evidence was reviewed in Blagojevich’s two separate appeals to higher courts: “The very argument you are making now was looked at by the 7th circuit, by the supreme court. It was heard in the courtroom, and no one bought it.”
But Blagojavich maintained his innocence, saying that he was “thrown in prison and spent nearly eight years in prison for practicing politics — for seeking campaign contributions without a quid pro quo.”
Prompting Cooper to respond, “You’re creating a whole new alternate universe of facts, and that may be big in politics today, but it’s still frankly, just bullshit.”
She claims her mom named her after Twin Peaks iconic character Laura Palmer. Laura Day is a Chicago-based writer, freelance film and television producer and a creative producer for Women Of The Now.
