Van Jones: This Election Was A ‘Whitelash’ In Part

During CNN’s Election Night coverage, former Obama adviser Van Jones argued that the 2016 election was “a whitelash against a changing country. It was a whitelash against a black president, in part.”

Jones said, “This was many things. I — this was a rebellion against the elites, true. It was a complete reinvention of politics and polls. It’s true. But it was also something else. We’ve talked about race –we’ve talked about everything but race tonight. … This was a whitelash. This was a whitelash against a changing country. It was a whitelash against a black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes. And Donald Trump has a responsibility tonight to come out and reassure people that he is going to be the president of all the people who he insulted and offended and brushed aside. Yeah, when you say you want to take your country back, you’ve got a lot of people who feel that we’re not represented well either, but we don’t want to feel that someone has been elected by throwing away some of us to appeal more deeply to others. So, we — this is a deeply painful moment tonight. I know it’s not just about race. There’s more going on than that, but race is here too. We’ve got to talk about it.”

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