CNN host Anderson Cooper used the occasion of his little-watched program to insinuate that other networks — which generally means Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News — are “promoting” another “civil war” while they “relish the idea of the destruction of society,” though as usual, his claims were long on hyperbole and short on substance.
“There’s a lot of people, who throw around the term civil war, and some on podcasts seem to kind of relish the idea of the destruction of society,” said Cooper. “The very people who are, kind, of promoting that here, on podcasts, right now — and other networks — who probably have not done service, and have not seen it for themselves.”
Chatting with his pals in the Democratic Party, CNN's Anderson Cooper claims "other networks" aka Fox News "relish the idea of sparking another civil war. pic.twitter.com/i0z1cuJTdV
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 7, 2022
The host made his claims during a Thursday evening marathon program special, “January 6: One Year Later,” which featured a conga line of Democratic elected officials including Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.) and Ruben Gallego (Arizona).
“You two … have seen what civil wars look like up close,” Cooper said to Rep. Crow, a former Army Ranger who served three terms in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gallego, who served as an infantryman with the U.S. Marines in Iraq. “You both have seen up close, through the window of a Humvee, and out on the streets, what happens when a society collapses.”
The Daily Wire notes:
The host — whom CNN has increasingly tried to promote as its central anchor since the departure of its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, last year — did not specify which television networks or podcasts “relish” or are “promoting” the taking up of arms to overthrow the U.S. government. A scan of the transcripts of Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network turns up no incitements to violently seize power in the U.S. Capitol, while showing many condemnations of politically motivated violence.
Yet Cooper forecast that these unnamed malefactors “will be swept up in [the forthcoming civil war] and destroyed, as well as everybody else. I mean, that is not anything anybody should even talk about, or wish, ever think about happening.”
“Absolutely not,” Gallego responded.
But neither he nor any of the other panelists pushed back on Cooper’s unsubstantiated claims. And in fact, if anyone has been calling for violence over the past year or so, it’s been Democrats:
— Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, when she was vying to become Joe Biden’s running mate, called for protests and riots to continue during the summer and fall of 2020.
“They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop,” she told him. “This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not,” she told late-night host Steven Colbert in June 2020 as entire city blocks were being destroyed, stores were being looted, and police officers attacked.
— Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) has, on several occasions, incited violence against the then-Trump administration and Republicans, as well as residents of Minneapolis ahead of what was a murder verdict in former police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial.
Inciting Americans to attack others is the very definition of civil conflict, which can lead to outright war.
The Daily Wire noted further:
Despite the lack of specificity, Cooper spent much of this week warning CNN of an impending civil war. On Tuesday, he interviewed Barbara F. Walter of the University of California at San Diego and author of the forthcoming book “How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them.”
“In the civil wars you looked at, how do civil wars get started? And how close do you think is the United States?” he asked.
“Over the last five years, I’ve been watching what’s happening here in my own country, and one of the things that I’ve seen is that these same factors are emerging here in the United States — and they’re emerging at a surprisingly fast rate,” she said.
“What factors are you talking about? What specifically do you look at?” Cooper asked. “What are the parallels?
“So, we don’t look at individual cases,” Walter noted further, saying that her research revolved entirely around a “predictive model” that is computer-generated.
She finally noted there is a loss of “democracy” and a rise in instability that occurs when societies “broke down along racial, ethnic and religious lines; formed political parties along those lines; and then tried to capture power, to exclude everyone else.”
She didn’t mention, however, the Democratic left’s pushing of the highly divisive and racist Black Lives Matter and critical race theory narratives, both of which serve to balkanize Americans along those very lines.
