Appearing as a panel member on Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN political commentator Errol Louis -- political anchor for Time Warner Cable News -- painted critics of Hillary Clinton as being "detached from any kind of rational reading of the facts in many cases" as he inoculated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton from possibly damaging revelations that could come from the FBI investigation into her email server.
After correspondent Evan Perez updated viewers on the latest in the investigation, host Cooper turned to Louis at 8:35 p.m. ET and posed: "The fact that there are leaks or however Evan (Perez), you know, officials saying there's no evidence at this point, the fact that stuff is leaking out, that raises concerns among people."
Louis conveyed cynicism against critics of the Clintons as he began:
Well, that's right, and I don't think anything definitive is going to be sufficient to stop, say, candidate Trump or anyone else from using whatever they want to use. I mean, we have to accept, it's just the reality that Hillary Clinton long ago detached -- criticism of her was long ago detached from any kind of rational reading of the facts in many cases.
He further undermined future criticism of Hillary Clinton as he added:
You know, there are a lot of different reasons why you may want to oppose her, but there's a whole industry out there, this cottage industry where people have books and they have movies and they have all kinds of stuff alleging the most lurid sorts of things, so, you know, in this case, you have a candidate who has never really definitively renounced birtherism against President Obama.
He's going to be able to say -- and he will if he chooses -- say, "Hillary Clinton is X, Y, and Z, there's all kinds of evidence, and maybe she's going to go to jail." He's been saying it throughout the campaign up until now.
