If your joke doesn't land the first time, just repeat it louder.
Donald Trump once again referred to CNN's Anderson Cooper as "Allison" at a Friday rally in Traverse City, Michigan when the anchor's town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris came up. The attempt at an insult implies both that gay men are women, and that being a woman is somehow degrading.
“If you watched her being interviewed by Allison Cooper the other night, he’s a nice person. You know Allison Cooper? CNN fake news,” Trump said, according to The Associated Press, adding in a mocking tone, “Oh, she said no, his name is Anderson. Oh, no.”
Trump repeated the name at another Michigan rally on Saturday, stating: "They had a town hall. Even Allison Cooper was embarrassed by it. He was embarrassed by it.”
The former president previously referred to Cooper using a woman's name while attacking the reporter's 2019 interview with writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually abusing her in 1996. Carroll was later awarded $83.3 million in damages by a New York jury after it found Trump liable for defamation over his public claims accusing her of lying.
Cooper addressed Trump's insults in a September segment where he focused in on the former president's accusations that he had swayed Carroll's answers in the interview, calling the claims "unfounded," and only briefly addressing the insult by noting its childishness.
“He recently referred to me using a female first name, which I guess is like a third-grade gay taunt," Cooper said, adding, "It's not worth replying to."
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The GOP has heavily relied on attacks against LGBTQ+ people in the past several weeks leading up to the election. Republicans spent more than $65 million on attack ads against the trans community since August, according to a report from The New York Times, and Trump recently singled out transgender people in an interview with pundit Joe Rogan.
The anti-LGBTQ+ strategy doesn't seem to be working, as a recent Data For Progress survey found that 54 percent of likely voters believe political attack ads targeting the trans community have become “mean-spirited and out of hand.”