Journalist and daytime talk show host Anderson Cooper slammed former "View" host Star Jones after she publicly criticized his decision to come out as gay over the summer.
During his talk show "Anderson Live" on Thursday, Cooper said he received a lot of positive feedback to his coming out, but was annoyed that Jones said it was a ratings ploy.
In June, Jones addressed Cooper's decision to come out publicly on NBC's "Today Show" a day after his announcement.
"I've been in daytime television for a long time," Jones said. "He's a daytime talk show host and when the ratings slip in daytime, the hosts tend to tell you lots of things about them. I remember Oprah said she smoked crack. Oprah said she was pregnant at 14 and considered suicide. There were times that you generate information for ratings."
However, Cooper said that was not the case. "If I was wanting to boost ratings, I would have waited to announce it on 'A Very Special Episode' that would have been promo'd for weeks and weeks and there would have been commercials...'Anderson's Huge Announcement,'" he said. "But instead I was in Africa on assignment for '60 Minutes.' I wasn't even on the air for days afterward!"
He also said that Jones' comments were hypocritical. "As memory serves, in terms of boosting ratings, I seem to recall [Star] hocking her wedding every single day to get free products when she was on 'The View' and I seem to recall her lying about her gastric bypass surgery and making everybody else lie about it as well. So for her to suddenly emerge out of the shadows and suddenly attack me for this, I couldn't believe it," Cooper added.
According to Cooper, Jones was invited to his show to discuss the comments but she turned him down. However, Jones did not avoid the topic after Cooper's comments, taking to Twitter to issue her reply.
"I was wrong. @andersoncooper didn't come out as a ratings ploy. He used ME talking about him coming out @todayshow as a ratings ploy. #mybad," she wrote.
Cooper did not reply to Jones' tweet, however, many on Twitter responded to Jones saying that it was she that was using Cooper to boost her publicity.