Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs responded Friday to President Trump’s praising Rep. Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican who assaulted the journalist last year, calling Trump a liar and a coward.

Jacobs, who covered Trump for 18 months on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, said that he knew there was a possibility the president would mock a crime victim. Still, after Trump called Gianforte “a tremendous person and a tough cookie” at a rally Thursday in Missoula, Mont., Jacobs felt “shock and dismay.” He wished that the president had surprised him, he said.

“A tough cookie does not attack someone out of nowhere without provocation, for asking questions about health-care policy,” Jacobs said in an interview with CNN. “That’s not the action of a tough cookie. That’s the action of a coward."

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who interviewed Jacobs on Friday evening, commented, “Clearly, the president’s love of ‘tough cookies’ — as he calls them — is matched only by his antipathy for the press.”