Anderson Cooper shut down Donald Trump during a CNN town hall on Tuesday night, saying he used “the argument of a five-year-old.”
During the conversation, Cooper asked Trump about an unflattering photo the GOP candidate retweeted of Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi next to Trump’s wife Melania. “I thought it was a nice picture of Heidi,” Trump said.
Cooper pushed back, responding, “Come on, you’re running for president of the United States.”
“Look, I didn’t start it,” Trump said.
“Sir, with all due respect, that’s the argument of a five-year-old,” Cooper retorted.
Unsurprisingly, Trump protested, telling Cooper, “It is not!”
“The argument of a five-year-old is, ‘He started it’!” Cooper went on.
The feud between Trump and Cruz escalated last week, when Trump claimed that Cruz used a photo of his wife posing nude in a campaign ad and threatened to “spill the beans” about his wife, without specifying what that meant. The ad was in fact produced by anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome.
At the town hall, Trump again maintained that it was Cruz who was responsible for spreading the ad.
Variety Staff | © 2016 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC