NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo on Monday called out media outlets and “political players” who have downplayed the assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump.
Cuomo’s reality check came during his impassioned opening monologue on his eponymously-named show, Cuomo. He said he is bothered by the “reaction and lack of reaction to the second attempt on Trump in the last couple of months” and called out those who say the suspected would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, “didn’t even shoot.”
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“What if it was your father?” Cuomo asked. “Or what if it was Kamala Harris or President Biden, God forbid? [Do] you think that it would be almost a shoulder shrug and more of talk about the Secret Service and allocation of funds than just how crazy it is that this is what’s happening in our country?”
Cuomo emphasized that Trump “had an AK-47 pointed at him” while rebuking those who have reacted by minimizing the significance of the latest assassination attempt on Trump and the one in Bulter, Pennsylvania, in July, where a bullet narrowly missed killing him, instead striking his ear.
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“The reaction is unacceptable, and it’s the second time media and political players have gotten away with playing down what should be a cause for panic,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo shared that he had trouble coming up with the words for Monday’s show, which prompted him to talk with Trump on the phone.
“And you can think what you want about Trump. He does not have many more full-throated critics of what he says and does than me,” Cuomo said. “And, yet, I called him today because I am ashamed of how we are responding and not responding to the threats on him.”
Cuomo also called out X owner Elon Musk for his now-deleted post on X Sunday, in which he wrote, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”
“I’m a believer in this guy’s potential. Now, he hasn’t learned that erasing a tweet doesn’t make it go away, it only shows that he knows what he said was stupid,” Cuomo said.
“That is what hinting about targeting Harris is — it’s stupid,” he added.