[griojw id=”lS8EJkJz” playerid=”GqX43ZoG”]
While Kim Kardashian’s meeting with the President to lobby for prison reform has rubbed many people the wrong way, Van Jones took up for the reality star, but April Ryan still wasn’t having it.
For her part, Kardashian dipped her toe into the realm of prison reform by advocating for the release of Alice Marie Johnson. The 62-year-old great-grandmother is currently serving a life sentence in Alabama for money laundering and drug conspiracy related to her involvement in a cocaine ring, reports the Atlanta Black Star. The 1997 charges were Johnson’s first.
—Kim Kardashian met with Donald Trump to discuss prison reform and the internet has jokes—
Jones caught Ryan’s ire when he said Kardashian’s marketing skills earned her a seat at the table to campaign for Johnson.
“People have always underestimated her,” Jones said on “CNN Tonight” Wednesday. “She is not a household name because she is a dummy. She’s a brilliant marketer and she’s now using her marketing to try to help this woman.”
But Ryan said there were other skills that made her notable—and they were clearly not her political capabilities.
“Van, Van, Van, Van.” Ryan interrupted. ‘She’s a household name for something else, uh uh, she’s a household name for something else,” alluding to the 2007 sex tape with singer Ray J that first made Kardashian internet famous.
“The dismissal of Kim Kardashian based on a mistake that she made when she was a young woman, I’m just tired of that,” he said.
—Lebron vs J.R. Smith: 10 savage memes roast Cavaliers player for losing NBA finals game—
“A lot of people have made that kind of mistake with a sex tape but they have not then gone on to build multi-hundred million dollar or billion dollar businesses. Part of what has to happen, if we believe in redemption — for Ms. Alice, for the 200,000 federal prisoners, for everybody — then, let’s believe in it for everybody and applaud people when they do the right thing. For once, let’s applaud people when they do the right thing.”
You never know which side of the fence Jones will ride on. While he said he disagrees with the White House on most things, he praised Trump during his 2017 SOTU speech and was criticized heavily for it.
