We're getting very tired of CNN's Van "In Crowd" Jones, would- be interlocutor (via princeling Jared "Mr. Ivanka Trump" Kushner) and occasional fluffer of the Trump regime:
Jones went on CNN’s Inside Politics with John King and Anderson Cooper 360 to enthusiastically commend Trump’s executive order—even as it was being criticized as cynical and unproductive by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and “delusional” by the Color of Change, an influential racial justice organization that Jones himself co-founded in 2005.
CNN viewers weren’t informed that he had actually attended secret White House meetings with his new friend Jared Kushner, discussing ways to frame the presidential project. [snip]
Hours later, Jones doubled down on Anderson Cooper 360—again without disclosing his role advising the Trump White House. “What do you make of this executive order?” Cooper asked him.
“I think it’s pushing in the right direction,” Jones told the CNN anchor. “What you got today is, I think, a sign that we are winning,” he added. “Donald Trump has put himself on record saying we need to reform the police department… We are winning! Donald Trump had no plan a month ago to work on this issue at all. The fact that we are now in the direction of moving forward, I think, is good.”
During a Rose Garden ceremony that was actually a Trump campaign event—at which the president defended the police, touted his commitment to “law and order,” boasted about the stock market and the pre-coronavirus economy, and attacked Joe Biden—Trump was flanked by uniformed officers and police union officials as he signed the executive order in response to the pandemic of unjustified killings of unarmed Black Americans by white cops.Wonkette's Stephen Robinson adds more texture:
The Jones/Kushner relationship is something out of a Jordan Peele movie. In early 2017, Jones was dragging Trump like any Black man who's alive and conscious would. He (correctly) noted that Trump was "one of the worst people ever born." Then CNN's Washington Bureau Chief, Sam Feist, introduced Jones to Trump's creepy Ken doll son-in-law and a week later Jones is claiming Trump “became president" when he said something nice about the widow of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens during his first address to Congress:
JONES: [T]hat was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics. Period…For people who had been hoping that he would become unifying, hoping that he might find some way to become presidential, they should be happy with that moment.Owens was the first American to die in combat during Trump's administration, but the squatter-in-chief still tried to pin the blame on Barack Obama. That moment during Trump's address to Congress wasn't “extraordinary" or “unifying."
Kushner and Jones became “fast friends" and the undercover brother even has dinner sometimes with Jared and Ivanka Trump. He comes in through the front door and everything! The couple has also introduced Jones to the mid-tier celebrities willing to socialize with them.How very sweet. As Robinson notes, the Jones- Kushner alliance has roots, and Jones has been helping Kushner out of media scrapes before. His appearances from now on need to be vetted better by his employer or at least a warning should appear in the chyron: "Opinion may be influenced by unethical considerations."
Access is a powerful drug, but the side effects include loss of dignity, credibility and sense of smell.
(Photo: "Undercover brother" Van Jones, second from left, shares giggles with BFFs Mr. Ivanka, Ivanka, and former AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, at a Trump event in May 2018 on prison reform/ Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
