CNN host Anderson Cooper questioned the Obama administration’s decision not to send a top level official to a Paris unity rally held over the weekend, and took a guess at where Vice President Joe Biden was during the event.
“He spends weekends watching, like, ‘Gilmore Girls,’ on his DVR,” Cooper said jokingly of Biden in an interview David Letterman on Friday.
“I mean, I don’t know, what else does a Vice President do?” Cooper said to audience laughter. “I mean, no disrespect, you know.”
Cooper and Letterman were discussing the Obama administration’s decision to not send any top level official to the rally, which was attended by more than 40 world leaders and meant to show solidarity following last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
Obama and Biden were both at home in Washington, D.C.
Cooper also made a direct dig at Obama.
“And to see President Obama there was just extraordinary,” Cooper said to Letterman, sarcastically.
Letterman provided the administration’s explanation for why no high-ranking U.S. official attended the rally, which was that the event came together at the last minute and that the security detail needed to send a U.S. delegation would have upstaged the event.
“I have no idea,” Cooper told Letterman of the decision. “They’ve now come out come out and said, look, it was a mistake not to send somebody of a higher level.”
Jane Hartley, the U.S. Ambassador to France, was the top-ranking diplomat to attend the event.
“But that’s basically what Vice Presidents exist for, I mean that kind of thing,” Cooper said. “I’m not sure what he was doing that weekend. Eric Holder was over in Paris, I mean, Secretary of State John Kerry is now supposed to go Thursday or Friday.”
When Letterman asserted that this was a missed opportunity, Cooper agreed.
“Without a doubt,” he said. “And there were a huge number of world leaders there. And they weren’t actually leading the march. It was really a photo opportunity for obvious security reasons. But it was certainly a missed opportunity for the United States to have a high level representation.”
Besides Cooper, another CNN host, Jake Tapper, has publicly criticized the Obama administration for not sending a higher level official to stand beside the other world leaders.
WATCH: