Anderson Cooper Exposes Trump’s Second Amendment Double Standard — With Receipts

President Donald Trump and his ilk might think Americans have short attention spans, but a 24-hour cable news network has enough footage to jog anyone’s memory.

On Monday’s episode of “Anderson Cooper 360,” the CNN anchor tackled MAGA’s pearl-clutching response to Alex Pretti having a concealed gun — and how their reaction reeks of a double standard.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was filming Border Patrol agents with his cell phone in Minneapolis on Saturday when he attempted to help a fellow demonstrator who was pushed to the ground by an agent. Pretti was then quickly swarmed by federal agents who eventually wrestled him to the ground and fatally wounded him after firing 10 shots, eyewitness video shows.

Although Pretti had a gun on him during the time of the incident, the video shows that it was never in his hands, and his weapon was only revealed after an agent took it out of its holster moments before Pretti was shot. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference after Pretti’s death that he was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”

Despite Pretti exercising his Second Amendment right — a right passionately lauded by Trump’s base — Cooper noted that in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s death, “administration officials were highly critical of anyone carrying a weapon in the first place.”

Cooper then rolled tape of FBI Director Kash Patel and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s responses to Pretti having a firearm.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem, who infamously shot her own puppy, said at a press conference Saturday.

“You cannot bring a firearm, loaded with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you wanted,” Patel recently told Fox News.

Patel added, “It’s that simple. You don’t have that right to break the law and incite violence.”

After rolling the clips of Noem and Patel’s remarks, Cooper seemed visibly perplexed by their rhetoric and noted that this is not “what we’re accustomed to hearing” from either of them.

Cooper went on to point out that what makes Patel’s remarks especially hypocritical is that Patel “went so far as to raise money” for Kyle Rittenhouse, and Cooper provided the receipts to prove it.

Cooper rolled a 2021 clip of Patel soliciting donations for Rittenhouse, who shot three people, killing two, at a protest against police brutality in 2020 when he was 17 years old. Rittenhouse was acquitted of murder after saying he acted in self-defense.

Cooper noted that Rittenhouse had met with Trump, who called Rittenhouse “a nice young man.”

Cooper then segued into Trump, who posted a photo of Pretti’s firearm to his website Truth Social Saturday and wrote: “This is the gunman’s gun (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go – What is that all about?”

“Now, again, this is from a president who, until this weekend, hardly stopped talking about his love for the Second Amendment,” Cooper said, before playing multiple clips of Trump defending the Second Amendment.

After airing the clips of Trump, Cooper somberly looked at the camera and concluded:

“Now, he supports the Second Amendment – just not all the time, depending on who’s carrying the gun and who gets killed. Alex Pretti was apparently not his kind of gun owner.”

Watch the clip from “Anderson Cooper 360” in full below.