Tearing up Tuesday night, Van Jones said it “hurt” that President Trump blamed “both sides” for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend. One woman was killed and 19 others injured when a car drove into a crowd of counterprotesters. The suspected driver has been charged with second-degree murder.
“We are spiraling away from each other and you want the President to be the person who comes and grabs us by the hands and pulls us back together,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”
“He’s actually cheerleading for one side and defending one side,” he added. “He’s not defending the humanity of the people who were run over.”
The CNN commentator said that, by defending white nationalist protesters, the President failed to defend a large swath of Americans. He cited his Jewish godmother, saying it’s sad that she “can’t come to the television and see the President of the United States show any sympathy for her.”
“This is not funny, this is not cute, it’s not a sound-bite war,” Jones said. “At a certain point, you have a lot of people now just not — not just the people you’re emboldening, but the people you’re abandoning, who now don’t know if they have a government that gives a damn about them.”
“I don’t know what to say tonight,” he added. “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.”
