“Who Is the Thug Here?” Anderson Cooper Is Apparently Done With Donald Trump

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Anderson Cooper on Monday night. Courtesy of CNN

On AC360 on Monday night, less than two hours after President Donald Trump delivered a short speech at the White House in which he threatened to send in the military to states if governors and mayors could not curb the growing unrest around the country, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper opened the program with a blunt statement: "We are witnessing a failure of presidential leadership,"

Greeting CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins to the program, Cooper then noted that, after giving that controversial speech, the president strode across Pennsylvania Avenue for a bible-holding photo op in front of a boarded-up St. John’s Church—a path cleared for him by the tear-gassing of protestors—and asked Collins how that event came to be.

Quoting unnamed sources within the administration, Collins said: "It was driven in part by the fact that he was upset over coverage that he had been rushed to the underground bunker" while protestors gathered outside the White House. "Oh, my God," Anderson interjected, as Collins continued her report. "Wow."

"We are in trouble,” Cooper told her, looking incredulous. “He was hiding in a bunker and embarrassed that people know that. So what does he have to do? He has to sic police on peaceful protesters so he can make a big show of being the little big man walking to a closed down church.”

While CNN aired the footage of Trump crossing Lafayette Square after police had cleared out what had been a peaceful protest, Cooper said, “He always talks about how the world is laughing at the governors right now. The only person the world is laughing at is the President of the United States. And this event, if it wasn’t so dangerous and disgusting, it would be funny because it’s just so low rent and sad.”

Cooper added, “I planned to come tonight and trying to be as calm and reasonable and straightforward—and do this hour of news. And this happened. I can’t believe this is what we have. This is the President we have. They wanted a disrupter? Well, yeah. That’s what disruption is.”

Cooper then went on to discuss—and casually dismiss—Trump's assertion that he would send in the military if the states did not end the protests on their own. Cooper said Trump “claimed a power he doesn’t really have. He can’t send the military into every state—that’s not law and order. What the president doesn’t seem to know or care is that the vast majority of those protesting, they too are calling for law and order. A black man killed with four officers holding him down, a knee to the neck, for more than eight minutes, more than three minutes which he was no longer conscious for. That is not law and order. That’s murder.”

He went on to say that Trump “seems to think that dominating black people, dominating peaceful protesters is law and order. It’s not. He calls them thugs. Who is the thug here? Hiding in a bunker. Hiding behind a suit. Who is the thug? People have waited for days for this wannabe wartime president to say something. And this is what he says. And that is what he does.”

Later, Cooper mocked Trump for that photo op at St. John’s Church, where the president briefly (and awkwardly) held up a Bible.

Cooper also brought on to his show Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, asking for her reaction to Trump's visit to her church. "I am outraged," Budde responded. "The President did not pray when he came to St. John's, nor as you just articulated, did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now."

She added that the protestors that the president had condemned were "rightfully demanding an end to 400 years of systemic racism and white supremacy in our country. And I just want the world to know, that we in the diocese of Washington, following Jesus and his way of love ... we distance ourselves from the incendiary language of this President. We follow someone who lived a life of nonviolence and sacrificial love."

"We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others," Budde continued. "And I just can't believe what my eyes have seen."