CNN host Anderson Cooper played the comedian on Monday night, mocking President Trump in his feature "The Ridiculist," comparing Trump's "stable genius" quote to two old comedy animals: Wile E. Coyote and Mr. Ed, as well as Mindy Kaling's character on The Office. Trump is always mocked for besmirching the seriousness of the office of President, but no one has that kind of respect for the office of Anchorman. They've besmirched it with their own arrogance, that everyone must have their snarky "take" on the world.
In Cooper's case, if he didn't surrender his journalistic respectability by hosting the ABC reality show The Mole, it vanished when he first started ringing in the new year with Kathy Griffin on CNN ten years ago.
COOPER: Time now for "The Ridiculist". And we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the president's weekend declaration of his superior intellect. In a series of tweets, the president insisted that he is "like really smart and a very stable genius." Thereby becoming the latest in a long line of really smart people who publicly announced that they are geniuses, and by long line I mean there are two other examples.
WILE E. COYOTE: Permit me to introduce myself, my name is coyote, Wile E. Coyote, genius.
MINDY KALING IN THE OFFICE: You guys, I'm like really smart now. You don't even know.
COOPER, grinning: That's right, Wile E. Coyote and Kelly from The Office and now, the president of the United States. This came up briefly when Senator Lindsey Graham was on The View this morning.
JOY BEHAR: So do you think he's like really smart and a stable genius? [Laughter]
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): I think this, if he doesn't call himself a genius, nobody else will.
COOPER: Well, we got to laugh, but it's not actually true that nobody else will call him a genius. A few came close yesterday and one did in fact use the G-word.
That was Trump aide Stephen Miller, who on CNN called him a "political genius."
COOPER: A political genius. Okay! Some people believe that and that's fine. But that's not really what we're getting at here. On Twitter, many pointed to the Einstein quote, "I am not a genius, I am just curious." Many more thought the only stable genius out there is America's favorite talking horse from days of TV yore, the famous Mr. Ed. And speaking of horses, of course, of course, someone else tweeted, stable genius sounds like a Nat Geo show about a guy who helps horses with psychological and behavioral issues.
There were also a few variations of this perspective -- [New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff tweeted] quote, "I have not lost my mind!, he shouted into a handheld device at 7 a.m. on a Saturday." And really summing it up [Kate Brannen, JustSecurity.org], "I'm a very stable genius is something you hear a lot from very stable geniuses."
Cooper declared "the president's Twitter declaration was about as subtle as a face tattoo that says I'm Understated."
PS: To see the other, much less snarky Cooper, see him follow Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2008, asking tough questions like "At the end of a day like this, what do you do? How do you decompress?"
