The day after the Orlando nightclub shooting, Anderson Cooper blasted Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s hypocrisy of saying that she stands with the LGBT community after the Orlando nightclub shooting, after fighting the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state just last year, and ignoring Gay Pride Month on her Twitter feed. Now Bondi is speaking out after that no doubt embarrassing interview, saying that Cooper’s line of questioning was inappropriate during such a tragic time.
According to the Daily Beast, Bondi called into a radio show to defend herself from Cooper, saying that he filmed her outside a medical center where “people were clinging for their lives.” She also said that she had been busy defending the injured victims from a price-gouging funeral home and charity scams, and wanted to raise awareness of that issue on CNN. Instead, she said, Cooper wanted to promote “anger” against Bondi. “There’s a time and place for everything, but yesterday wasn’t the time nor the place in front of a hospital when we could have been helping victims,” she said.
She continues to say that Cooper could’ve used his platform to help Bondi’s office help the victims and their families, as well as the LGBT community at large:
Anderson Cooper is the champion of the LGBT community, and he could’ve been helping people yesterday, so I was disappointed in that. I was extremely disappointed in that. And it wasn’t just the time nor the place for that yesterday, because all it did was encourage anger and hate, and families who were trying to help to probably not trust my office and the 14 advocates we brought in who were helping trying to help them get compensation to bury their loved ones.
Bondi went on to say that she’s been getting hate mail after her interview with Cooper as well, which is unfortunate. She does have a point that she was probably working as attorney general to respond to the victims and their families after this tragedy, when Cooper caught up with her. Still, her past efforts against gay marriage are worth scrutinizing, especially in the face of continued anti-LGBT discrimination and violence. For the record, she says that Cooper brought up a “constitutional issue,” but who knows when the time and place to grill her on that will be, according to Pam Bondi.
(Via Daily Beast)