Anderson Cooper Apologizes for Repeating Lie that 47% of Americans Don’t Pay Taxes During GOP Debate
Click here to view this media I came close to posting this bit the night of the debate and slamming Anderson Cooper for repeating the right-wing lie that 47% of Americans don’t pay any taxes at all, conflating income taxes with the average levels of taxation that all Americans pay for plenty of other things, and Cooper beat me to it by offering this apology for his misstatement during the CNN GOP debate this week which he moderated. Here’s Cooper from the end of his “Keeping Them Honest” segment : COOPER: And finally, “Keeping Them Honest,” the moderator, me. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Congressman Bachmann, you also said at the last debate that everyone should pay something. Does that mean that you would raise taxes on the 47 percent of Americans who currently don’t pay taxes? (END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: I said it during the debate and the discussion afterwards, I was flat out wrong of course. What I knew and meant to say was 40 percent of Americans do not pay federal income tax. They do of course pay plenty of other state, local and federal taxes including federal payroll taxes, gasoline taxes and on and on. I made a mistake last night and I apologize. I’ve got a lot of issues with CNN doing their best to be Fox-lite, but was glad to see Cooper do the right thing here and offer the correction.
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Anderson Cooper Apologizes for Repeating Lie that 47% of Americans Don’t Pay Taxes During GOP Debate
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on October 21, 2011. Filed under