CNN’s Anderson Cooper compared the riots in the Capitol last month to the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s when 800,000 people were killed.
“We’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 were cockroaches, you know, getting them ginned up for genocide,” Cooper said Tuesday on CNN while speaking with Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
“And you see it in these videos where people who claim they are patriots are in the face of a police officer,” Cooper said.
Kinzinger didn’t push back against the comparisons during the interview.
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An estimated 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in 1994. Five people died during the Capitol siege on Jan. 6, including a woman, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by law enforcement, and Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.
Cooper previously cited Rwandan genocide during a segment on Jan. 12 while discussing Trump supporters who talk about a "civil war in America."
“You know, I remember seeing you in the lobby of a hotel in Egypt in the midst of the revolution. And it was a really scary day,” Cooper told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at the time. “I was, I was, I’ve seen a lot and I was very scared that day. You’ve been to a lot of civil wars. You know, I was in Rwanda in the genocide briefly, I was in Bosnia, we’ve, you know, we’re in Iraq, Afghanistan, you’ve been around the world, you’ve seen a lot.”
“I hear people talking about civil war in America as if they know what they’re talking about, as if they know what that looks like,” he continued. “And unless you’ve seen it up close, I mean, it is a horrible, horrible thing. 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.”
