‘He’s Just Leaning Into the Racist He’s Long Been’: Anderson Cooper Unloads on Trump’s ‘Divisive, Inflammatory’ Rhetoric Amid Surging Pandemic

Anderson Cooper unloaded on President Donald Trump for his increasingly open embrace of racist symbolism like Confederate flags, even as the country faces overlapping, unprecedented crises.

In a long, uncompromising opening monologue, the CNN host began by blasting Trump’s “divisive inflammatory racist words” as the only prescription offered for a coronavirus pandemic that is now averaging more than 50,000 new daily cases in the U.S while numerous other Western countries have all but stopped the spread.

“Tonight he’s safe inside his biological bunker surrounded by people wearing masks getting tested and… encouraging the rest of us not to follow the best scientific advice,” Cooper said. “He’s trying to persuade the country that the virus is simply vanishing, or if that won’t work, he’s trying to divert people’s attention elsewhere to smearing a black NASCAR driver, supporting the Confederate flag and statutes of traitors.”

Earlier on Monday, Trump blasted both NASACR and driver Bubba Wallace, falsely accusing the latter of perpetrating a hoax about the noose found in his garage and then condemning the former for banning Confederate flags from its racetracks. White House Press Secretary then executed numerous verbal cartwheels to avoid directly answering whether Trump supports the flying of flags of the treasonous Confederacy.

“White House task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci said we’re still knee-deep in the first wave of this. Today, the country crossed another milestone 130,000 lives lost,” Cooper noted. “By tomorrow or Wednesday, it will surpass another 3 million known Covid cases. That milestone. Those are facts. So is this. We now have more cases than any other country on Earth and more fatalities. Again, than any other country on Earth. We’re number one for cases and for deaths. America is first. It is a fact that because of how much worse we are doing than any other country on Earth, Americans can’t travel to other parts of the world, can’t fly, for example, to Europe where the virus is largely under control.”

Cooper then played a clip of Trump’s 4th of July address, where attacked “the far Left” and boasted of the federal government’s response to the pandemic, which Cooper snarked came “by the gaslight’s blue glare.” From there, the CNN host showed Trump’s false claim on Sunday that, for 99% of Covid-19 patients, the effects are “totally harmless.”

“Thank god that hospitals and doctors do know more about this virus now and are able to treat it better,” Cooper said, pointing out the current, lower fatality rate among positive cases. “It seems instead to be part of the same contempt he’s had for testing period, because it makes him look bad. That’s what he felt from the beginning of this. Just think about how much work that is and plays into the larger disregard. Keeping them honest, this war-time president took himself out of the fight months ago and being more honest, he was never in the fight to begin with. He avoided wars and talks tough. When this viral war began he was nowhere to be found. Maybe those old bone spurs of his flaring up but he wasn’t in the fight. He wants us to suck it up.”

“This president wants you to suck it up, not just the virus but his failure to take it seriously,” Cooper continued, piling on the criticism. “His inaction altering the month of February. His lies and promises disappearing. He wants you to accept what people in no other country are being told to accept because this isn’t just a virus killing us and making people sick: it’s incompetence and a failure of leadership. Instead of working around the clock on this, visiting hospitals, rallying the troops, rallying the public to wear masks, fight complacency, care for elderly and the sick, this president is simply declaring victory, declaring Covid 99% harmless instead of talking about the virus and doing things about it, he’s spending his time to trying to distract now with racist and jingoistic talk. He’s just leaning full into the racist he’s long been, he’s just letting us see it more clearly now than ever before.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.