CNN anchor Anderson Cooper launched his show last night with a fierce, emotional monologue criticising President Donald Trump for his handling of the civil unrest engulfing the US.
Protests have broken out across the country - and now, globally - in response to the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who lost his life when a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.
Trump was criticised for a tweet in which he declared "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in response to the uprising, and finally addressed the nation yesterday ahead of a bizarre photo op in which he was pictured holding up a copy of the Bible outside of a church next to the White House.
In his speech, which was punctuated by the sounds of police using tear gas and rubber bullets on nearby protestors, Trump vowed to "quickly solve the problem" caused by "professional anarchists" by deploying the US military if the protests continue.
Opening his Anderson Cooper 360 show afterwards, long-serving anchor Cooper said: "We are witnessing a failure of presidential leadership at a time when this country, when we the people, need it more than ever, perhaps in our lifetime."
He 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 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."
Watch Cooper's powerful piece in full below:
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