CNN is like the Trump White House: It's a target-rich environment deserving of legitimate criticism.

And like the flimsy and intentionally misleading attacks on the Trump administration, Donald Trump Jr.’s broadside this weekend against CNN’s Anderson Cooper makes no sense.

Trump Jr. retweeted a meme recently showing Cooper standing in waist-deep floodwaters. The picture also shows the CNN anchor's nearby cameraman standing in water that is no more than ankle-deep. The president’s eldest son wrote in an accompanying note, “It’s a shame that CNN’s ratings are down 41%. What’s worse is there’s a simple solution that they refuse to accept. Stop Lying to try to make [Donald Trump] look bad.”

Jr.’s implication is clear: Cooper is guilty of pulling a stunt to make floodwaters look more hazardous than they really are.

It’s a shame that CNN’s ratings are down 41%. What’s worse is there’s a simple solution that they refuse to accept. Stop Lying to try to make @realDonaldTrump look bad. https://t.co/O3XyWchsJh pic.twitter.com/BCUCxKnOvO — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 16, 2018

Former Trump administration official Gavin Smith shared Jr.’s tweet with a note that read, “Absolutely disgraceful.” Housing and Urban Development official Lynne Patton wrote elsewhere on Instagram, “You know it’s sad when even the WEATHER is #FakeNews.”

The problem here is that Jr. and his like-minded supporters omitted a lot of crucial information pertaining to the photo they shared. For starters, it’s a 10-year-old photo from the days of Hurricane Ike. It’s not from the network’s more recent coverage of Hurricane Florence, as one is led to assume from Jr.’s tweet.

Furthermore, Cooper wasn’t kneeling or doing anything else to make it appear as if the situation in Texas was more dangerous than it really was. That segment was specifically about how the floodwaters had receded from the day before. Cooper was also discussing that floodwaters can be deceptive and that they can become quite deep, quite quickly in certain areas.

The CNN anchor, for his part, responded this week to the tweets.

“You can argue I didn’t need to be standing in waist-deep water,” Cooper said. “I could have been standing on the road by the camera crew. But, again, I didn’t want to be roaming around on the highway interfering with rescue vehicles in any way. I also wanted to show people how deep the water was and how dangerous it is for anyone driving.”

He added, “I’ve covered hurricanes for about 14 years and it really does make me sad to think that I would fake something or overly dramatize a disaster.”



Jr., of course, responded to Cooper’s response, saying, “Not surprised [AC360] lied about me on CNN last night. Par for the course. I never said the pic of him was from Florence. When I tweeted out the picture of [AC360] it was with a link to an article about CNN's dwindling ratings. Nothing to do with Florence.”

Sure, it was just an honest mistake that everyone thought he was talking about Florence.

The thing I don’t get is: If Jr. wants to criticize CNN, why not just go after its botched reporting on the GOP and the Trump White House? This is like when the president's critics are caught fabricating stories about his administration. When there's so much to go after legitimately, why make things up?

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Full disclosure: This author is a paid contributor with CNN/HLN.