American journalist and primary anchorman of the CNN news broadcast Anderson Cooper has called Donald Trump an “obese turtle” while live on-air, causing the phrase to trend massively on Twitter.
Speaking live after Trump’s press conference this morning, Cooper made it clear that he believed that the behaviour exhibited by the President of the United States was that of someone in the throes of hopelessness, thus the expression of a turtle on its back.
“That is the most powerful person in the world, and we see him, like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun, realising his time is over,” he said on-air.
“But he just hasn’t accepted it and he wants to take everybody down with him, including this country.”
You can view the clip of Cooper absolutely lashing out at Trump below.
“An obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over.” pic.twitter.com/AL76HSRbtZ
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 6, 2020
The comment was a direct response to Trump’s press conference just moments before, in which the President made claims that there were illegal mail-in votes being made in Biden’s favour and a “rigged” election at hand, which were completely baseless and without any evidence whatsoever.
The CNN chyron writer absolutely was not having any of it, and so wrote “Trump complains that mail-in votes are being counted” and “without any evidence, Trump says he’s being cheated” over the speech.
Other broadcasters like NBC completely cut Trump off before he was even able to finish what he had to say, while USA Today completely removed the footage from their sites saying “our job is to spread the truth – not unfounded conspiracies.”
The CNN chyron writer right now. pic.twitter.com/quUeuZwrau
— Nicole Perlroth (@nicoleperlroth) November 6, 2020
Twitter, naturally, has already created accounts dedicated to the comment. Currently, there have been over 16k tweets using #ObeseTurtle, making the phrase trend almost immediately.
https://twitter.com/ToddTanji/status/1324539626225283072?s=20
One account, cleverly named Count Every Votordoise, was quick to create a meme around the comment, sharing a picture of a tortoise with Donald Trump hair.
I’m just big boned #obeseturtle pic.twitter.com/e6al36xv6l
— It IS the guns. And the idiots. (@Tyler_Tortoise) November 6, 2020
And naturally, there were swathes of memes rolling in about the comment. It’s important to note that the comment made live on-air about Trump did in fact veer on unnecessary fat-shaming, and the word ‘obese’ was not at all necessary to get the same point across.
https://twitter.com/JNASLDN/status/1324541301749145608?s=20
We’ll see who finally becomes president once these damn votes get counted.
