Anderson Cooper tells off pro-Trump ex-governor, sick little girl related to JD Vance denied heart

A sick young relative of US Vice President JD Vance has been denied a heart transplant. It comes as an anchor tells a pro-Trump politician a “don’t be a d***” live on air. Watch the video.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu engaged in a tense on-air exchange Tuesday, culminating in a remark from Cooper that quickly went viral: “Don’t be a d***.”

The heated discussion occurred during a CNN panel analysing Elon Musk’s recent Oval Office press conference with President Trump reports the New York Post.

Mr Musk, who has been acting as an informal adviser who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), used the briefing to highlight what he claimed were instances of excessive and mismanaged federal spending.

CNN host Anderson Cooper snaps at his pro-Trump guest. Picture: CNN

Sununu defended Musk’s claims, arguing that they shed light on longstanding concerns about government waste and corruption.

During the discussion, Sununu pointed out that Musk had offered “specific examples off the top of his head of where the corruption and fraud were,” including the claim that Social Security funds were still being paid to a person who had allegedly been dead for 150 years.

Cooper, however, pushed back, criticising Musk for failing to provide any supporting evidence.

“He didn’t present any actual evidence,” Cooper said, emphasising that Mr Musk’s statements lacked verification.

Sununu countered by questioning whether Cooper expected Musk to “come in with 10,000 pages” of documents to back up his claims.

Cooper later apologised for the outburst. Picture: CNN

The conversation escalated further when Cooper attempted to shift the discussion to the Trump administration’s recent firing of four Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees over allegations that they used federal funds to house migrants in New York City hotels.

Mr Sununu pressed further. “So, would you stop that? Would you stop that process?”

At that moment, Cooper lost his patience. “Don’t be a d***,” he said. “What I’m saying is the portrayal by him [Musk] is just not factually accurate.”

After the sharp exchange, Cooper later apologised to Sununu, acknowledging his tone had been inappropriate. “I was mean, I was rude to you,” he admitted.

FOLLOW BELOW FOR UPDATES:

VANCE’S RELATIVE DENIED HEART TRANSPLANT

A 12-year-old Indiana girl who is related to Vice President JD Vance has been barred from a spot on a heart transplant list because she’s not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu, according to the New York Post.

Adaline Deal, a distant relative of the VP by marriage through his half-siblings, was born with two rare heart conditions that her family knew would one day require a transplant, her mother Janeen Deal told The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Adaline — who was adopted from China when she was 4 — was treated at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for nearly 10 years, and her parents hoped she would get the transplant there.

But the hospital requires transplant patients to be vaccinated, and declined to make an exemption even when told it goes against the family’s religious beliefs as non-denominational Christians, the parents said.

Adaline Deal is the adopted distant relative by marriage of US Vice president JD Vance. Picture: GoFundMe

“I thought, wow. So, it’s not about the kid. It’s not about saving her life,” Janeen Deal told the newspaper of the hospital’s decision to deny her daughter.

The mum, who believes vaccines are unsafe, said she and her husband decided not to vaccinate Adaline against COVID-19 or the flu after “the Holy Spirit put it on our hearts.”

Vaccinations against preventable diseases are recommended for transplant recipients because those patients are much more vulnerable to infections.

For patients with severe illnesses like Adaline, who has Ebstein’s anomaly and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, there is a higher risk of death if infected with Covid compared to other patients, according to Dr. Camille Kotton, the clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“The first year after transplant is when they’re at highest risk for infection, but they do have a lifelong risk of severe disease and transplant patients are still dying because of COVID-19,” Kotton said.

Janeen, however, said she was confident her family, including their 11 other children, would not have any problems with COVID-19 after the transplant.

US POLITICIANS JOIN TRUMP-MUSK SHAKE-UP

Republicans have vowed to tackle the “stunning” US national debt, as politicians began work on Mr Trump’s plan for the most radical downsizing of the US federal government in decades.

The House Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee will be the legislative arm of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts as Trump’s right-hand man to save $1 trillion (A$1.6 trillion) by attacking fraud and waste.

Its first hearing — “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud” — featured testimony from a former FBI agent and the head of a welfare fraud watchdog.

“This committee will be laser-focused on bringing full transparency to waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, and presenting the plans to fix the tremendous problems we expose,” chair Marjorie Taylor Greene said in her opening statement.

“We, as a country, are $36 trillion [A$57 trillion] in debt. That is such a stunning amount of money. It’s absolutely staggering to even comprehend how we as a people, we as a country, found ourselves here.” The hearing was convened with government workers staging demonstrations against deep staffing cuts ordered by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Critics say the world’s richest man has enormous conflicts of interest as a major government contractor, although Mr Trump — without producing any evidence — claims that his “efficiency tsar” has already uncovered tens of billions of dollars in fraud.

Republicans have largely backed the DOGE agenda, although funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health have been met with mild dissent.

A prominent voice on the party’s hard right with a history of bigoted comments, Ms Greene has been brought from the fringes into the centre of Republican politics as Mr Trump’s influence has grown.

UN EXPERT HAILS TRUMP’S TRANS BAN

Meanwhile, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has hailed Mr Trump’s executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

Reem Alsalem called the February 5 order a decisive step to ensure fairness, safety, and dignity for female athletes, but also called for open sports categories to be created, to ensure nobody is left behind.

“This decision reaffirms the importance of maintaining sex-based categories in sports, thereby safeguarding equal opportunities for women and girls,” Alsalem said in a statement.

Mr Trump’s order allows US government agencies to deny funds to schools that allow transgender athletes to compete on women’s teams.

“From now on women’s sports will be only for women,” Mr Trump said at the time. The order has been criticised by the human rights organisation Amnesty International, which called it “yet another cruel attack on transgender people”.

Ms Alsalem said the order “sends a clear message that the rights of women and girls to female-only spaces, including in sports, matter”.

UN special rapporteurs are independent experts mandated by the Human Rights Council to report their findings. They do not speak for the United Nations itself.

Ms Alsalem urged Washington to make sure that while it reviews its policies, everyone could participate in sports in safety, dignity and equality.

“To ensure that no-one is left behind, I urge the US government to ensure that open sports categories are created — or that the male category in sport is converted into an open category, for those not wishing to play in the category of their biological sex,” she said.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which regulates student athletics in colleges across the country, welcomed Mr Trump’s order and said they would align to it.

Mr Trump has said he will push the International Olympic Committee to change its rules on transgender athletes before the 2028 Los Angeles Games, and had ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to tell the IOC “we want them to change everything … having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject.” The IOC allows each international sports federation to set their own rules on the issue.

Many of those have in the past or still do allow males who identify as transgender to compete in female categories.

“I welcome the emphasis on promoting international rules and norms to protect women and girl athletes at all levels,” said Alsalem.

– with AFP

Originally published as Anderson Cooper tells off pro-Trump ex-governor, sick little girl related to JD Vance denied heart