CNN contributor Van Jones had a soft moment for ex-President Donald Trump on his indictment day, asking viewers to remember that Trump is a “grand-dad having a very bad day.”
All of television news was transfixed Tuesday as Trump traveled to New York Tuesday for his arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom, during which Bragg’s indictment was unsealed and the 34 felony counts against Trump were revealed.
During CNN’s wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s trip to court, several of the network’s panelists tried to evoke pity for Trump, even though it was Jones who elicited the strongest reactions on social media. For example:
- VAN JONES: “There’s a lot of pain that comes as — as you go through this process. There’s pain for — there’s pant for your marriage. There’s pain for your kids. He’s a grandfather.”
- ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: “Well, and that car ride was something like 20 minutes over. We don’t I don’t know if we know whether anyone was riding with him. If anything, I would think it would be an attorney. But that’s a very long and lonely car ride.”
- DAVID URBAN: “I would just say, look, this is a president who has normally got a smile on his face, he’s upbeat… it had to be a tough, tough ride.”
And then there was this:
JONES: He looks sad. Yes, he looks sad. He looks like the weight of it is hitting him. And you know, just as a human being.I don’t — I don’t take joy. I don’t like the prison system. I don’t like what it does to people. I don’t like this process. I don’t take any celebration in seeing him looking that way.What he looks like now doesn’t mean that the accountability is not owed. We don’t know what he’s going to be charged with. There’s a lot more in the bucket.But at that moment, that is not a conqueror. That is a granddad having a very bad day.
Stunned Twitter users did not feel the human connection Jones tried to make between the trauma of the criminal justice system and Trump:
Watch above via CNN.