Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones on Friday surprised a lot of people when he blamed America’s race problems not on the Republican Party or red states in general, but on “white, liberal Hillary Clinton voters.” Talking about the George Floyd death and the violence and riots in Minneapolis, Jones said of people who are angry: “They’re tired of people saying over and over again that, you know, we’re just basically one bill away, one election away from some progress.”
He blamed, “It is not the racist white person who is in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about. It is the white liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park who would tell you right now, you know, people like that, ‘I don’t see race, race is no big deal to me, I see us all as the same, I give to charities.’”
Speaking of Amy Cooper, the woman who called police and falsely singled out an “African American man threatening my life,” he added, “But the minute she sees a black man who she does not respect or who she has a slight thought against, she weaponized race like she had been trained by the Aryan nation. A Klan member could not have been better trained to pick up the police — pick up the phone and tell the police ‘a black man, African-American man, come get him.’”
Jones concluded, “So, even the most liberal, well-intentioned white person has a virus in his or her brain that can be activated at an instant.”
On election night 2016, he famously blamed Donald Trump’s election on a “white lash,” saying, “This was a ‘white-lash.’ This was a ‘white-lash’ against a changing country. It was a ‘white-lash’ against a black president.”
See transcript below. Click “expand” to read more.
New Day
5/29/2020
8:23 AM ET
VAN JONES: The world witnessed a lynching. There have been lynchings happening in America for hundreds of years. This is what we have lived with. When you see the police arrest our colleagues in broad daylight, well, daylight, but right there, when they weren’t doing anything wrong, that happens every day in America, to black people all the time, the arbitrary and capricious abuse of authority. Now, because it was on television, it was handled quickly. But that is — there is another reality here, which you’re starting to see. You thought maybe the world worked one way because police are nice to you, because these things don’t happen to people you know, but the whole time there is a whole other America and the reason that you see people now doing the things they’re doing, we have no idea who set those fires. It could have been provocateurs, it could be anybody.
But the reason you see people willing to risk their lives in the middle of a plague and pandemic and to go out and literally risk their lives to protest is because people are now fed up. People are telling me they’re tired of hashtags, they’re tired of Van Jones saying we can have a bipartisan solution, they’re tired of people like me, they’re tired of people saying over and over again that, you know, we’re just basically one bill away, one election away from some progress. It is not the racist white person who is in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about. It is the white liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park who would tell you right now, you know, people like that, ‘I don’t see race, race is no big deal to me, I see us all as the same, I give to charities.’ But the minute she sees a black man who she does not respect or who she has a slight thought against, she weaponized race like she had been trained by the Aryan nation. A Klan member could not have been better trained to pick up the police — pick up the phone and tell the police ‘a black man, African-American man, come get him.’
So, even the most liberal, well-intentioned white person has a virus in his or her brain that can be activated at an instant. So, what you’re seeing now is a curtain falling away. And those of us who have been burdened by this every minute, every second of our entire lives are fragile right now.
We are fragile right now. We are tired. And so I appreciate people who have been reaching out.