(WIREUPDATE) — One of CNN’s last true journalists was on his game tonight. In an interview with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), Anderson Cooper pointed out the hypocrisy the two-term Congressman has been spewing as of late between civility in public discourse and his comments calling Republicans Nazis and Tea Party attendees members of the KKK.

“I just don’t understand why you have to bring the Nazis into a discussion about health care and your opponents,” Cooper masterfully began, “Your comments seem especially hypocritical given that you just wrote an editorial in Role Call about the dangers of hateful rhetoric and reckless speech. You wrote – ‘Reckless and hateful speech often has a terrible human cost. If the horrific events in Arizona are not enough to modulate our public discourse it is likely there will be more violence, more deaths.’ You really think your comments advance civility in the public discourse?”

Cohen stuttered a response admitting his rhetoric was not a prime example of civility. “I guess they don’t advance civility per se, but I believe telling lies is uncivil. I think somebody needs to stand up to the lies that are being told.”

Cohen told Cooper that the Republicans were using a Joseph Goebbels tactic, “Keep it short, keep it simple, keep [repeating] it over and over and people would believe it,” which ironically enough were the same controversial remarks he himself repeated on the House floor earlier this week.

Later in the interview Cohen once again repeated the same message, “They have emulated [Geobbels] tactics of repeating a lie over and over. The fact is that is what they have done. And the fact is it has been effective. And the fact is they continue to do it to this day.” This lead to Cooper questioning a second time why Cohen felt the need to compare the Republicans to Nazis and Goebbels. Cohen committed he would never make the analogy again even though he feels he was right.

Also in the interview Cohen stood by equally uncivil remarks he made last April when he compared the Tea Party to the KKK. He said the two movements arose from similar circumstances because both wanted “their power back.”

“There were people who were out of power and they wanted their power back. The Klan after the Civil War was upset that the African Americans had been given the right to vote and many of them were in office and they didn’t like it. And they wanted to form to get back their own government. They wanted to take back their government. And the Tea Party feels like they are out of power with President Obama, that’s where they started, and they want to take back their government. Now without robes and hoods they’re not out doing things like the Klan did, but they got formed the same kind of way. They were people who had been disposed from being the power group and wanted to take it back.”

Cooper rebutted, “You can compare them to any populist movement, comparing them to the KKK seems incendiary. It seems deeply offense to hundreds of thousands of people who are in the Tea Party”

Well done Anderson!