CNN's Cooper: Horror and Loss of UGA Slaying 'Compounded' by 'How Quickly' It Was 'Politicized'

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper stated that the “horrifying” facts of the death of Laken Hope Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia last week and the “sense of loss” over her death have “now been compounded by the revelation the suspect was in this country unlawfully and how quickly that fact became politicized.”

Cooper said, “Georgia officials today released grim new details in the killing of nursing student Laken Hope Riley on the University of Georgia campus last Thursday, as if the initial facts were not horrifying enough or the sense of loss not deep enough by now. And all of it has now been compounded by the revelation the suspect was in this country unlawfully and how quickly that fact became politicized.”

After Cooper’s comments, he played a report from CNN National Correspondent Ryan Young that discussed suspect Jose Ibarra’s legal status and record and mentioned Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump criticizing President Joe Biden’s border policies over the case where Young stated that Trump was “hyperbolizing the current border crisis as ‘Biden’s border invasion’ on Truth Social, saying Riley’s murder should’ve ‘never happened.’”