CNN's Cooper illustrates the disrespect of Trump's 'shithole' comment on anniversary of catastrophic Haitian quake

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Trump's 'shithole' comment just happened to take place the day before the 8th anniversary of the deadliest earthquake ever to hit Haiti.

• US President Donald Trump's comment that countries like Haiti are a "shithole" came the day before the 8th anniversary of the country's 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000.
• CNN's Anderson Cooper was in Haiti covering the catastrophe. He witnessed the heroic acts of regular people, unaided by the government, digging their fellow Haitians out of the rubble.
• Cooper said Trump could learn from the dignity of ordinary Haitians.

On the eve of the anniversary of Haiti's 2010 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 and displaced more than a million, CNN's Anderson Cooper became choked up when responding to President Donald Trump calling the country a "shithole."

Trump's comment came during a meeting with lawmakers on immigration, where he openly bashed Haiti and countries like it, and instead expressed an interest in accepting immigrants from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he had spoken to the day before.

Cooper, one of the first journalists on the ground after the massive earthquake reduced much of Haiti's capital of Port Au Prince to rubble, detailed the harrowing feats of humanity and strength he witnessed there.

"For days and weeks without help from their own government or police, the people of Haiti dug through rubble with their bare and bloodied hands to save strangers, guided only by the cries of the wounded and the dying," Cooper recounted.

United Nations Development Programme

While international efforts received significant media coverage, much of the local rescue effort was conducted by Haitians.

Cooper had to pause to collect himself while recalling the plight of a five-year-old boy who had been buried under rubble for seven days.

"Do you know what strength it takes to survive on rainwater buried under concrete?" Cooper asked. "The people of Haiti have been through more... they fought back against more injustice than our president ever has," said Cooper. 

Cooper acknowledged that Haiti, like all countries, contains a mix of people, but insisted on a dignity throughout the national character.

"It's a dignity many in this White House could learn from. It's a dignity that the president, with all his money and power, could learn from as well," said Cooper. 

Here's Cooper's monologue in full: