I think we were naive during the first two years of the [Barack] Obama Administration because the Republicans didn't fight us on this point during the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama and McCain both ran on a clean energy platform. But now, uncontested lies have eroded hard-won public understanding. So, we have to go back and make the case again.
Van Jones[I wish no one ever asked me ] "Did you sign that petition implicating the Bush Administration in 9/11?" Because I never signed it, and I hate being vilified for a controversial idea I never espoused.
Van JonesYou know it's not "you have to see it to believe it" - sometimes you have to believe it to see it. You have to know what you're looking for when you're seeing signs of an authoritarian takeover of your country.
Van JonesWe thought Donald Trump was leaving that world of entertainment and climbing over the wall into politics. In fact, what he did was he pulled the world of politics into the world of reality television.
Van JonesThe reality is if you take any three people and look at their cellphones or blackberries and facebook pages, you can get to almost everywhere in the country, because we're networked together in a way that is incredibly powerful.
Van JonesThat America is in the calamity is a result of a certain amount of elitism in the Democratic Party where they're tied to the sensibility of the college-educated, multicultural crowd, of which I'm a part, which has created a sense where it's OK to say, "All the red state voters are stupid, they're all dummies, they're all racist, they're all backwards mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging ..." all that stuff. And that kind of elitism, which is first of all not true, is also not fair. It's also dumb strategy.
Van Jones