‘He Intimidated Your Network’: Rep. Dan Goldman Tells Anderson Cooper His CNN Colleagues Gave ‘No Pushback’ on Trump

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) is not a fan of how Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderated Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump .

Biden’s performance was universally panned across the spectrum and overshadowed the fact that Trump uttered about 30 falsehoods during the debate on CNN. Tapper and Bash took heat from liberals for not fact-checking either of the candidates, who both made inaccurate statements, though Trump was especially mendacious . Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans praised the moderators.

Appearing on Friday’s edition of AC360 on CNN, Goldman fielded a question from Anderson Cooper and pivoted to how Tapper and Bash conducted the debate.

“There is another debate that they have both agreed to do,” Cooper noted. “Would you want that to take place?”

The host’s query prompted the following exchange:

GOLDMAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think Joe Biden had an off tonight. It was a poor performance. There’s no question about it and no one is saying anything different. But let’s have another debate. Let’s see what happens on a different night. Let’s see whether, you know, Donald Trump continues to lie over and over to deny his role in January 6th, to proudly say that he increased the deficit more than any other president by reducing taxes on the super-wealthy. He is blatantly mischaracterizing the disaster that was his presidency and that got a lot of attention and didn’t get a lot of pushback.

But let’s have another debate where, actually, the moderators will push back on Donald Trump’s lies. He intimidated your network, unfortunately. And there was no pushback. He was given free rein to just lie as much as he wants and that’s not helpful to the American public either.

COOPER: Yeah, I don’t know about the intimidation part. But I wasn’t part of the discussions on any of this, but obviously, in a debate, it is the primary job of the opponent to, you know, have a direct counter and rebuttal to what somebody else is saying. And clearly, the president was not able to do that. We will see, obviously, in another debate, if that will change. Congressmen Goldman, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

GOLDMAN: Thank you.

Watch above via CNN.