Van Jones Stuns CNN Colleagues With Child Molestation Analogy About DeSantis Slavery Remarks

CNN analyst Van Jones offered a stunning analogy for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defending a new Black History curriculum that includes teaching the “personal benefit” of skills learned under slavery.

DeSantis has been steadfastly defending the newly-approved Florida curriculum on Black history — which includes teaching that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”  — and even offered the example of a hypothetical person “parlaying” their enslavement into a blacksmithing career “later in life.”

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) very gently rebuked DeSantis on the campaign trail, offering that maybe he was having “a bad day”:

There’s no silver lining in freedom– in slavery. The truth is, even if you learn that any benefits that people suggest you had during slavery, you would have had as a free person. Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans, and raping their wives. It was devastating.

So I would hope that every person in our country, and certainly running for president, would appreciate that.

Listen, people have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.

On Friday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Jones pushed back on Scott’s assessment, and literally raised eyebrows by comparing the governor’s defense to someone finding the upside to child molestation:

VAN JONES: Yeah, look, I mean, that’s Tim Scott. You know, he’s not afraid to talk about these issues. I think in terms of what people can understand. Probably gives a little bit too much grace to Ron DeSantis. But that’s who he is. I mean, everybody has a bad day. Sometimes you wind up praising slavery! That’s a little bit more than a bad day. But, you know, it’s it’s deeply offensive what DeSantis is saying.

You take, I don’t know, child sexual predation and trafficking, which is something that the right wing is concerned about. What if I got here and said, “well, you know, maybe your your your piano teacher molested you, but you learned how to play the piano! Maybe your football coach molested you. But you learned how to throw a football! Would that be acceptable? I think people would be shocked to hear somebody say something that stupid and tone deaf and horrible.

But that’s what DeSantis is doing. And I think it should be disqualifying the party of Lincoln. The party of Lincoln should not have somebody apologizing for slavery anywhere near them.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.