CNN host Anderson Cooper appeared on the Conan O’Brien show, and during a discussion about Haiti, he claimed that the destitute island nation is “among the richest countries I’ve been to” due to its culture and people.
O’Brien recently announced that he was inspired to travel to Haiti to film a bit for his “Conan Without Borders” series as a reaction to comments reportedly made by President Trump about Haiti, which have thus far been unsubstantiated and denied by Trump himself and many who were in his presence at the time of the supposed offense.
“Haiti is… the poorest country in the Western hemisphere,” Cooper prefaced. “But a country can be poor economically and rich in culture, and rich in the strength of the people, and rich in so many different ways. And Haiti is, in that way, among the richest countries I’ve ever been to.”
“The Haitian people are incredibly strong, carry themselves with such dignity; and for generations have had governments which have not paid attention to them, which have stolen from them, and yet, whatever they have faced, they have faced it head on.”
“Haitians look you in the eye. They slap your hand hard when you shake it,” he asserted, assuring O’Brien that he would have an “unforgettable experience.”
Unfortunately, a vibrant culture and firm handshakes do not put food on the table or build proper infrastructure.
As a sovereign nation, Haiti is less than 30 years younger than the United States, yet it’s capital city of Port-au-Prince, with a population roughly equivalent to Chicago, still does not even have a sewer system, and many Haitians have never used a proper toilet before.
“The cumulative sewage of 3 million people flows through open ditches,” reports NPR on the matter. “It mixes with ubiquitous piles of garbage. Each night, an all-but-invisible army of workers called bayakou descend into man-sized holes with buckets to remove human waste from septic pits and latrines, then dump it into the canals that cut through the city.”
Even before devastating natural disasters crippled the already struggling country – a massive earthquake in 2010, followed by catastrophic Hurricane Matthew in 2016 – many Haitians were surviving on ‘mud pies’ and ‘dirt cookies’ because rice and beans were already too expensive.
Cooper professed that his fond memories and deep personal connections to Haiti stretch back to his childhood, even claiming that he still vacations there often, so the fact that he has yet to report on the mass-scale looting of the nation’s resources and billions in relief funds by his fellow travelers in Camp Clinton is even more disturbing.
Anderson Cooper has long been in a position to do immeasurable good for the people of Haiti by exposing the evildoers who have raped their future and sentenced them to an existence of extreme misery, but he has chosen not to, making his tearful criticisms of President Trump and virtue signaling about his love for the place and its inhabitants all the more hollow.
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