CNN analyst Van Jones celebrated the Democrats’ midterm election victories Tuesday night by comparing the defeat for Republicans to the infamous 1978 Jonestown mass murder-suicide and calling the results a repudiation of President Donald Trump.
“I’m happy, happy, happy,” Jones said of the election results. “I’m so happy. Listen, this is way bigger. This is like Christmas and a birthday and the Easter bunny and Halloween. This is the repudiation of Trumpism that people have been hoping for, seeing American democracy — seeing that sometimes you have kleptocratic rulers that get in power and ensconce themselves for decades in America. Twenty-four months later, ‘Knock it off, we don’t want it.'”
He then compared the GOP losses to the mass murder-suicide at the Peoples Temple commune in Jonestown, Guyana, where more than 900 people died after cult leader Jim Jones directed his followers to drink cyanide-laced beverages.
“And by the way, if you join a cult at some point, the cult leader takes you to Jonestown and tries to get you to drink the Kool-aid. This is Jonestown for the Republican Party,” he said. “They drank the Kool-aid, and they have candidates that are dropping like flies across the country because they did not stand up to this guy when he was doing things that were wrong, when he was violating the law, when he was running over our system, they didn‘t stand up to him, and they‘re paying the price.”
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“It’s Jonestown tonight,” Jones added. “You join a cult, at some point, you go to Jonestown. That’s where you are tonight, Republicans.”
“Scott, I don’t know if you want to check what’s in your glass,” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper then joked to Republican panelist Scott Jennings, who was sitting next to Jones.
“Do you realize I’m sitting right here? I can hear everything you’re saying,” Jennings said. “I’ve been here the entire time.”
Jennings, however, acknowledged that Republicans were facing significant election losses.
“Well, look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There’s a political science term for what’s happening. It’s called a country a– whooping,” he said. “That’s what’s happening right now. Across the board.”
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“There’s a lot, a lot, a lot of reasons for what’s happening right now,” Jennings continued. “The most immediate issue is cost of living and gas prices. And that, that is the bottom line.”
“You could read into a lot of other things,” he added. “You can be jubilant about this, that or the other. But at the end of the day, the American people have here and now concerns. And that’s really the lesson you got to take away from this.”
