During CNN’s coverage of the RNC on Thursday, Commentator Van Jones slammed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s convention speech as a “schizophrenic psychopathic attempt to pull apart the Obama coalition,” like a moment “where there’s some big authoritarian movement, and some leader that’s rising up,” and “a disgrace.”
Jones began by praising Ivanka Trump’s speech before stating, “But what Donald Trump did tonight is a disgrace. That was a relentlessly, even for Donald Trump, who at least occasionally breaks up the fear-mongering with some jokes, some asides, some amusement, he had one funny line in an hour and 15 minutes, and the rest of it was just a relentlessly dark speech. He was describing some Mad Max America. I work in some of the toughest neighborhoods in some of the toughest communities in this country, and I don’t know what he’s talking about when he describes the country he’s talking about. And there was some schizophrenic psychopathic attempt to pull apart the Obama coalition, but from a political point of view, he even botched that. He says he reaches out to the LGBT community, and he says, foreign ideologies, that hate you, I’m against it, but the domestic ideologies, that hate you, apparently he’s for, because they’re all in his platform. He says he’s going to reach out to African-Americans and deal with their economic pain. It’s hard, Anderson, to get a job if you’re in a community that’s over-policed and you have a criminal record, and every other leader in the country, on both sides of the aisle, have talked about criminal justice. He didn’t. But this — I’m actually, I’ve never felt this way in my life. I have read in history, being in moments where there’s some big authoritarian movement, and some leader that’s rising up, and I felt that way tonight and it was terrifying to me. This speech divided the country. You’re either inspired by this, or you’re terrified by it.”
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