CNN anchor Anderson Cooper struggled to get two black guests on his program to call President Donald Trump racist on Tuesday night.

Cooper repeatedly suggested that Trump is racist because he insulted the intelligence of CNN anchor Don Lemon and NBA star LeBron James. His guests, however, weren’t taking the bait.

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“You don’t see … you don’t believe that there is any commonality in the criticisms, his go-to criticisms, on African Americans? You don’t see any through-line to this?” Cooper asked.

Trump supporter and former George W. Bush staffer Paris Dennard denied that the president only criticizes black people.

“The common denominator is: the president is responding to people who have said things that have been negative or harsh, or that have attacked him personally, or attacked his family, or attacked his character,” Dennard explained. “The president has done this to African-Americans, to white people, to white men, to white women, to members of his own cabinet.”

Harvard professor Cornel West agreed that the president doesn’t single out black people, arguing, “He has called some white sisters dumb. I think he called sister Mika [Brzezinski] on MSNBC dumb. So, I think brother Paris is right — he uses dumb across race, across gender.”

“He’s an equal opportunity gangster across the board,” West concluded.

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