CNN’s Baldwin: ‘We’re Better Than’ ‘Gutless’ Trump

Friday on CNN’s “Newsroom,” anchor Brooke Baldwin criticized President Donald Trump for bragging about his crowd sizes while visiting El Paso, TX in the wake of the mass shooting.

Baldwin said, “We begin with a snapshot from El Paso, Texas where 22 families are planning funerals and wounded survivors still lay in hospital beds traumatized. One day ago, the president of the United States visited that same hospital and bragged about himself. Once again bragged about the crowd size at one of his recent rallies there.”

She continued, “Listen, I know this presidency breaks every norm in the book. This isn’t about breaking with presidential behavior. This is just wrong. This is gutless. If we don’t continue to call it out, then we are normalizing this kind of behavior. Because we’re better than this.”

CNN political commentator Tara Setmayer said, “What a petty, small, insecure person. He never ceases to amaze me at how low he’ll go to feed his ego. This is malignant narcissism 101.”

She added, “It was my understanding that there were some victims that didn’t want to see him. Could anybody blame them? Look at the way this man behaves. This obsession he has with crowd size is just something that is — it’s not normal. It’s dysfunctional. This is not how a well-adjusted adult behaves.”

Baldwin said, “I’m fresh off a plane today from Ohio, you know, being surrounded by such sadness, such anger. I guess I’m sitting here wondering is it possible for a nation to heal without, as you point out, as George W. Bush or Barack Obama or countless others were —  without a ‘consoler in chief,’ especially one who divides.”

Setmayer said, “I’m not quite sure who do we turn to in this country. Because you sure in hell don’t have a consoler in chief, you have a whiner in chief, a victim in chief, a twitterer in chief, everything but what the office of the presidency requires in these moments. Trump never ever rises to the occasion. And he never will. He just never will.”

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