Anderson Cooper says tweet calling Trump a 'pathetic loser' was not posted by him

CNN's Anderson Cooper said Wednesday morning that a tweet from his account responding to President Donald Trump, calling him a "pathetic loser," was not posted by him.

After the stunning loss of Republican candidate Roy Moore in a special election to fill an Alabama Senate seat, Trump said in a Twitter post that he originally did not back Moore because he did not think he could win, which is why he endorsed another candidate in the Alabama primary.

"The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!"

Cooper's account then responded by saying, "Oh Really? You endorsed him you tool! Pathetic loser." That tweet has since been deleted.

In a follow-up tweet Cooper said that his account had been hacked. Cooper denied writing the message to the president: "just woke up to find out someone gained access to my twitter account. i have not sent a tweet in days or replied to any tweets. We are looking into how this happened," he said.

CNN's communications team issued a statement on Twitter as well, backing up Cooper's explanation that an unauthorised person gained control of his account. "This morning someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS. We're working with Twitter to secure the account."

Twitter declined to comment.

A spokesman for CNN and for Cooper did not immediately respond to a list of questions on Cooper's security practices, including whether Cooper shared his account credentials with other people, whether his Twitter account enabled two-factor authentication, and whether he had turned on a feature requiring a user to input extra personal information before an account password could be reset.