14 DAY TRIAL // Anderson Cooper is back in the US, following some very troubled days in Cairo, Egypt. On a recent episode of David Letterman, the CNN correspondent opened up about the attacks he suffered at the hands of pro-Mubarak protesters while there.
As we also noted at the time, Anderson and his crew were attacked on two separate occasions and eventually forced to go underground – and then leave the country altogether.
On Letterman, Cooper spoke about how the mob would attack anyone appearing as foreign (which he most certainly does), how Mubarak had instructed the mob to go against the press and went into some detail of the first time he was assaulted.
Asked about how it felt like to be the object of a serious “pummeling” – he took at least 10 punches to the head – Cooper says that was a first for him.
“I don’t recommend it,” he says. “I’d never been punched in the head before,” he adds.
He then went on to say how Mubarak had been “continuous lying” to people throughout the revolts, that pro-Mubarak protesters were actually “thugs” (perhaps even secret police) brought in for intimidation purposes, and that these past troubled couple of weeks represent the Egyptian people’s way of asking “basic rights” from a “dictator.”
As for the time he was attacked, he only made it worse by trying to get his assailants to calm down.
When he saw that telling them “Peace, peace” was not working out in terms of calming them down, Cooper turned to his limited knowledge of Arabic for help.
However, he ended up telling his attackers “God willing” because he got the words confused. He says the mistake was “sort of stupid.”
Then, on a lighter note, Cooper plays along with Letterman and jokes about how difficult it would have been for him to pass unnoticed in a crowd.
“Yes, I’m like a newt who’s emerged from underneath a rock. ‘Look for the pale, skinny, gray-haired man.’ Not too hard to identify,” he says.
Check out Anderson Cooper on David Letterman in the video below. Enjoy.