Anderson Cooper’s furious Trump takedown: ‘Who’s the thug here?’

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has launched a furious attack on US President Donald Trump, labelling the President a “thug” who “claimed a power he doesn’t really have.”

Cooper editorialised about the escalating tensions between police and protesters in the US while presenting his current affairs analysis program, Anderson Cooper 360.

He spoke as Trump emerged from the White House, where he had briefly been taken into an underground bunker by security for his safety over the weekend. Police forcibly moved protesters out of Lafayette Park across the road from the White House so the president could take a photo in front of a church that had been defaced.

It came after the President announced he would mobilise “heavily-armed military forces” to stop the “rioting and looting” taking place in protests across the United States, declaring the riots a “total disgrace”.

And the pointed commentary comes as police appear to be deliberately targeting reporters covering the unrest on the ground.

Cooper said he wanted to discuss the: “President of Law and Order, which is how he pronounced himself. He 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, nearly three minutes of which he was no longer conscious for? That’s not law and order. That’s murder. Stopping and frisking a young black man simply because he’s a black man? That’s not law and order.”

“The killing of George Floyd, Eric Garner, the torture of Abner Louima? That’s not law and order,” Cooper continued.

“The President seems to think that dominating black people, dominating peaceful protesters, is law and order – it’s not. He calls them thugs – who’s 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?”
 

Most footage I’ve seen from the protests makes it seem like journalists are being specifically targeted by the police. I feel extremely uneasy that the press is being treated this way. Silencing the media is censorship and an attack on our rights. https://t.co/RM0tmr5xQy

— Baby Boy (@LukeSteele13) June 2, 2020