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CNN’s Anderson Cooper Compares Capitol Riots To Rwandan Genocide

Anderson Cooper

CNN’s Anderson Cooper compared the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building last month to third-world genocides.

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CNN’s Anderson Cooper compared the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building last month to the third-world genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Five people died during the January riot, including four civilians. One was trampled, one was shot by police, two appear to have had heart attacks, and Capitol Police have not yet released cause of death confirmation about the one police officer who died.

“[W]e’ve seen it in Bosnia, we’ve seen it in Rwanda, where radios was telling people – you know, Hutus were telling the radio listeners that the Tutsi are cockroaches, you know, getting them ginned up for genocide,” Cooper said on his prime-time show Tuesday while Illinois GOP NeverTrump Rep. Adam Kinzinger nodded along. “And you see it in these videos where people who claim they are patriots are in the face of a police officer.”

Cooper’s Tuesday comments aren’t the first time the network anchor compared the horrific events of early January to the genocides overseas. Cooper offered the same analysis on his program Jan. 12.

“I was in Rwanda in the genocide… I hear people talking about civil war in America… I am so upset when I hear these people at rallies – Trump rallies talking about Civil War as if it’s some sort of a cleansing,” Cooper said.

The atrocities in Rwanda claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 people within 100 days in 1994. Another 8,000 were murdered in the Bosnian genocide at Srebrenica during the summer of 1995. Five died in the attacks last month at the U.S. Capitol.

Cooper employed no such inflammatory comparisons to the militant Black Lives Matter demonstrators erupting into repeated outbursts of political violence last summer. Due to their violence, several dozen Americans died amid riots and hundreds more Americans have been murdered as police pull back from their duties amid violent criticism.