In case your only source of news is ABC, CBS, NBC and/or The New York Times or, as the White House was hoping, you were out doing things with your family this long weekend and didn’t check the news (which was released after midnight Sunday so it wouldn’t be in any papers) the green jobs “czar,” special adviser to the president, Van Jones has resigned.
But here’s The One Thing: My phone, e-mail and Twitter were hammered all weekend with people offering congratulations. First, let me say I’m not the one to congratulate. I can go on and on about this stuff, but if you don’t care and it doesn’t connect with the American people, what I say doesn’t matter.
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So let me start with the good news: You still have power and clout in Washington. In many cases, your representatives in Washington knew nothing about Van Jones. You were educating them and it wasn’t until late last week that a few brave political people began to speak out.
But here’s the bad news: When this came out and people started to say congratulations, my first response was: You still don’t get it. This was a victory of sorts, but only for those playing political games. I’m not doing that and I don’t think you are either.
You are trying to protect and defend the Constitution. President Obama was hoping that this would go away. One of the headlines from the Politico this weekend was: “Beck Up, Left Down.”
I read the article a couple of times. Van Jones said this was a vicious smear campaign. Van Jones was able to resign, not be fired. And, during his resignation, he placed the blame on others, not himself.
What Van Jones doesn’t understand is that I didn’t bring down Van Jones; you didn’t bring down Van Jones; Van Jones brought down Van Jones.
Is it a smear campaign to quote Van Jones’ own words?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
VAN JONES, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: This movement is deeper than a solar panel! Deeper than a solar panel! Don’t stop there! Don’t stop there! We’re going to change the whole system! We’re going to change the whole thing. We want a new system. We want a new system!
JONES: And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn’t want, where it was all hot and windy. Well, guess what? Renewable energy? Guess what, solar industry? Guess what wind industry? They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth! Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt.
JONES: The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
The media got all worked up because Van Jones called Republicans a rude name:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How were the Republicans able to push things through when they had less than 60 senators, but somehow we can’t?
JONES: Well, the answer to that is they’re a—holes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
But listen to the rest of that quote — this is what makes him in many ways more dangerous; he is no longer restricted in what he can say or do:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONES: And Barack Obama is not an a—hole. So, um, now I will say this: I can be an a—hole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit ugly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
This isn’t about Van Jones. This is about the president and his policies:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA: Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed chairman, Paul Volcker. If I’m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden, or with Dick Lugar, the Republican-ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO. Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Let’s go back and look the Politico article. They say in the article that they didn’t scrub Van Jones. What does that mean? That the White House should have cleansed the Internet of his prior positions?
The other thing the media didn’t report was that Michelle Obama has a big fan of Van Jones. More importantly, if you look at the language of Robert Gibbs, the White House doesn’t endorse these things:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual. The president thanks Van Jones for his service in the first eight months in helping coordinate renewable energy jobs that are going to lay the foundation for our future economic growth…
(CROSSTALK)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ‘THIS WEEK’ HOST: Did the president want him to go?
GIBBS: Well, the president and the CEQ ultimately accepted his resignation, because Van Jones, as he says in his statement, understood that he was going to get in the way of the president, and ultimately this country, moving forward on something as important as creating jobs in a clean-energy economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
That’s is a far cry from rejecting Van Jones’ beliefs.
Communism, radicalism, black nationalism, racism is not something you just tolerate or don’t endorse. Those are the things that this administration must reject.
This isn’t a victory, this is a diversion. I’m not going to play their game. This isn’t about me and Van Jones, even if that’s what they want to make it. This is about taking Obama at his word when he said to judge him by the people he surrounds himself with.
Would you want Van Jones anywhere near American policy? A man who says things like this:
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
JONES: Human rights has [sic] no borders. Wherever there are human beings, it’s important for human rights activists to show support, show solidarity. What we want to see, at this point, is the rights of the Palestinian people being respected. And, at this point, the end of the occupation, the right of return for Palestinian people. These are the critical dividing lines — global dividing lines — questions of human rights. We have to be here.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
Where did that audio come from? Let me play you the introduction to that clip:
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
MUMIA-ABU JAMAL: This is Mumia Abu-Jamal, voice of the voiceless. And you’re listening to “War Times: Reports From the Opposition,” presented by Freedom Fighter Music and Hard Knock Radio.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
That was Mumia Abu Jamal, who murdered a police officer — with some witnesses claiming he murdered Daniel Faulkner execution-style.
You must remain focused. You are fighting for the Constitution of the United States and we’re not even finished with round one of this fight.
As I told you, this fight is not going to be fought with guns; this fight is going to be fought with questions and answers. I didn’t ask for Van Jones to resign. If Americans want the version of America as Van Jones sees it, OK, but I think we at least need a discussion. This can’t be done under the cover of darkness. There need to be questions and answers.
Without publicly rejecting Van Jones, do you want me to believe that he has no influence or access to you? Van Jones is a community organizer of the worst kind.
What have we learned about community organizations like ACORN? A year ago, nobody knew what a “community organization” was. Now, we’ve gotten a pretty good look at what some of these organizations, like ACORN, do. What we’ve found is that ACORN is a terrible organization. They are nearly — if not a full-fledged — criminal organization.
Now comes Van Jones building an army of community organizers: disenfranchised, communists, anarchists, prisoners. The worst of the worst are attracted to him. Where does he go now? Will he be selling clothes at JC Penny? Filling up slurpees for you at 7/11?
I don’t think so.
Does the influence of Van Jones and people like him have any bearing on the Cambridge incident — where Obama concedes he doesn’t have all the facts, but appears to make statements that presuppose the police were wrong?
Like Van Jones, this president didn’t reject, but merely commented that he didn’t endorse his views. I am confused because the people Obama surrounds himself with seem to help me make sense of his policies, but only if I look at those policies as nefarious to our founders’ Constitution.
The people that the radical left has been embracing should shock 95 percent of Americans. Michael Moore’s new movie calls capitalism “evil.” Is that how you feel about our system? One of the books that Michael Moore just told an interviewer he recently read was the book I’ve been warning you about for months: “The Coming Insurrection,” a radical, communist how-to manual.
Let me go back to the beginning where I shared the good news with you: It wasn’t me that did this, it was you. And here’s why that’s even better news than what you thought: If it were just me, through back channels, blogs and articles, the left and uber-left — not Democrats, but the radical left — has decided that they will try to destroy me any way they can.
That’s OK.
I’m a recovering alcoholic and I did some pretty bad things in my life. But I’ve owned up to them. Read my books; watch my videos. I fired a guy who brought me the wrong pen once. But I had a “pivot point” — a place in my life where I reached bottom and realized I couldn’t go any lower: Sitting at the table with my kids and having them ask me to share the story I had just told them the night before when I was drunk. I couldn’t remember the story, so I had to pretend. I had to lie to my kids. That hit me hard.
That was in 1995. It took me four years to really make the changes in my life that I needed and wanted to make. In November 1999, I began to change my life. I still make mistakes, but I try my hardest not to make the same mistakes and things that would bring dishonor to me and my family.
The left has doctored photos, documents and Web sites which frankly only dishonor them and hurt my children. But as I said to my kids this week, there is more to come. Because some people want to make it about politics and money and not the truth.
I will always tell you the truth, even when it hurts me personally. You do the same thing. It was just over 225 years ago that 56 men said with firm reliance on divine providence we mutually pledge our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor.
They won’t even give honest answers to honest questions. I will give up everything. While we’re waiting for those honest answers, perhaps we should have a debate about what kind of change America wants — out in the open, not under the cover of darkness.
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