On Tuesday night, CNN’s Van Jones didn’t hide his emotional response to Trump’s recent defense of white supremacists during a press conference.
In speaking with Anderson Cooper about Trump’s comments, Jones said, “You know, this is a tough night, I think, for normal people, and you’ve got a lot of people at home going through Kleenex right now. You’ve got a lot of people at home who are keeping their kids away from the TV tonight, because we’re spiraling away from each other.”
“You want the president to be the person who comes and grabs us by the hands and pulls us back together and reminds us what this is all supposed to be about,” Jones continued before saying that the president had instead sided with white supremacists.
–CNN segment about Charlottesville turns into on-air shouting match–
He expressed his frustration that the president was siding with their causes, saying, “He can’t distinguish between Nazis, with torches, saying anti-Jewish, anti-black stuff who went there chanting things that people died by the millions in the last century over. He can’t distinguish between them and the people who went there to try to defend people from those thugs.”
He then spoke about his godmother, who is Jewish and whose family suffered during World War II. “I think about what she’s gone through in her life speaking up for civil rights, the stories that she’s told me about her family, the things that her family suffered in Europe,” a clearly emotional Jones said. “And the fact that she can’t count on the President of the United States to stand with her when a Nazi ran over an American citizen, killed an American citizen with ISIS tactics in our country? And my godmother can’t turn on the television and see the President of the United States show any sympathy for her? The father of a Jewish daughter?”
“This is not funny. It’s not cute. It’s not a sound bite war…. It’s not just the people you’re emboldening. It’s the people you’re abandoning, who now don’t know if they have a government that gives a damn about them. Those are the people you have to worry about, too,” he continued.
He concluded, “I don’t know what to say tonight. I usually have something clever, something smart. I’m just hurt. I’m sitting here hurt. And I think a lot of people are hurt tonight.”
