Anderson Cooper eviscerates Donald Trumps for turning America into a ‘pariah state’ with his botched coronavirus handling
CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper tore into the Trump administration’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic rampaging the nation. (Screen capture via YouTube)
Anderson Cooper well and truly called class into session Tuesday night (June 30) as he ripped into Donald Trump’s bungled handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The CNN news anchor dealt a brutal broadside against the US president, declaring that the country had been turned into a “pariah state” following the European Union’s travel ban on people from America.
As much as leaders of the bloc attempted to keep the list of banned countries neutral, the choice to stonewall Americans from entering the 27 member states was a devastating blow to Trump, considering the list was drawn up based on health criteria.
On his Anderson Cooper 360° slot, the host tore into Trump. “The world leader for decades,” he said, cracking an incredulous laugh, “in the study of prevention for infectious disease, the biggest economy in the world, the only country to send people to the moon and we can’t even fly to Paris because Americans are now a health hazard.”
Anderson Cooper: The Trump administration has taken a ‘good luck, you’re on your own’ approach to coronavirus.
The 53-year-old responded to the government’s top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci’s sober warning that the US is barreling towards 100,000 virus cases per day at a startling speed.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told senators Tuesday (June 30) that with the coronavirus rapidly marching across the south and the west, the “whole country” is at risk.
Cooper emphasised the severity of the healthcare crisis, reflecting on how the daily caseload will soon amount to entire town’s worth of people becoming sickened with COVID-19.
He echoed fears from health chiefs that the US’ swelling figures means the country has “blown past” the use of track-and-trace.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (AL DRAGO/AFP via Getty Images)
“The country is now a pariah state,” Cooper said, listing the 14 counties the EU has reopened travel to, “but not the US.”
He added: “Let’s be honest, it’s not been a ‘whole of government’ approach, as ‘whole of government’ means federal government. It’s been a ‘good luck, you’re on your own’ – that’s the approach this administration decided to take when they left it to the states.”
Cooper lampooned the president for sewing this incoherent, patchwork response to the virus, which has forced hard-hit northeastern states to limit travel even from other states.
“All of government response, please. It’s every region, even state, every locality for itself.”
In undermining scientific expertise, eroding fact, and focusing on, essentially, everything else other than the death of 130,000 Americans, Cooper said Trump “sprays a mask on his face everyday for vanity, but an actual mask that will protect other people?
“That he just can’t do.”
