Anderson Cooper Blasts MoveOn Spokesman for Deceptive Ad Regarding Republicans and Womens Health

While the mainstream media may be spending Friday fretting over Anderson Cooper’s remarks regarding conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh’s weight, the CNN host also got in a spat with a MoveOn.org spokesman during AC 360 Thursday, slamming the organization’s continued campaign to portray a GOP war on women’s health.

To give a little background, House Republicans have faced continued criticism from Democrats for extending low interest rates for student loans last week, which is paid for by cuts to prevention initiatives in the president’s health care law that opponents allege is furthering “an assault on women’s health.” When scanning over the HHS website that lays out what’s in the now eliminated Prevention and Public Health Fund, nothing can be found in the fund that is specifically aimed at women aside from $7 million for breastfeeding. Despite this, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said last week of the GOP plan to extend the loans:

“In order to pay for it, [House Republicans] are going to make an assault on women’s health, make another assault on women’s health,continue our assault on women’s health and pay for this with prevention initiatives that are in effect right now for childhood immunization; for screening for breast cancer, for cervical cancer; and for initiatives to reduce birth defects – a large part of what the Center for Disease Control does in terms of prevention.”

Given the facts, the Washington Post Fact Checker blog awarded Pelosi’s statement Two Pinocchios and FactCheck.org of The Annenberg Public Policy Center has said The White House is greatly exaggerating when it says that “women, in particular,” will benefit from the fund set for elimination.

“We’ll chalk this up as another distortion in the political ‘war on women,’” Lori Robertson writes on FactCheck.

Despite the thrashing of the latest “war on women” claims from online fact-checkers earlier in the week, the progressive MoveOn posted a full-page ad in Politico Thursday attacking Republicans:

“Student loan rates double July 1, yet Republicans in Congress say they’ll only keep rates low if they cut funding for women’s health.

That’s crazy. And it’s not fooling anyone into thinking they care about students.”

The beating of a dead, two Pinocchio-rated horse caught the attention of NPR and Anderson Cooper for his “Keeping Them Honest” segment. Justin Ruben appeared on AC360 Thursday where Cooper criticized the ad’s distortion of facts regarding the debate surrounding cuts to fund the latest student loan extension.

“You only seem to be targeting Republicans because it meets your political agenda,” Cooper accused.

Watch the heated exchange, via CNN: