Van Jones: If Trump Died, ‘You’d Have Millions of People Ready to Shoot Back’

CORNISH: “That’s what I appreciated, that he came out and said, ‘We’ve seen this before. We‘ve done this before. We don‘t have to do it again if we choose not to.’”
Jones: “Yeah. And I think — well, first of all, I was proud of Biden. I was proud of Biden. And I was also really sad about it, because you shouldn‘t have — the president of the United States shouldn‘t have to come out and give a ‘ballots, not bullets’ address. That‘s basically what — you have the United States coming out here telling America, ‘ballots, not bullets.’ That should be pre-kindergarten. That‘s where we are. And I was proud of him taking on, and to your point, we‘ve been moving in this direction for awhile. 2011, you had Gabby Giffords shot. She survived barely. 2017, Steve Scalise, a Republican, gets shot. 2020, you have Gretchen, our governor from Michigan, almost kidnapped. January 6, maybe you hang the vice president. 2022, you‘ve got Paul Pelosi. Don‘t forget, you also had real fears about what‘s going to happen to Kavanaugh. And then also, then you get to 2024, you have himself. This is — this is an exponentially rising curve of political violence being normalized. And so, Donald Trump dodged a bullet, but he is not the only one. America dodged a bullet last night, America dodged a bullet. Because if that thing had been a quarter inch over, you would have had an assassination, and then I don‘t know how this country comes back from that because half the country would have felt that the other half of the country took their leader. And if only a small percentage of those people felt that means we‘re in a war, you’d have millions of people ready to do — to shoot back. And so, I was proud of Biden, I thought his tone was right. I hope Trump also mentions it. But this is not just yesterday. We‘ve been moving in this direction for a long time and we need a U-turn.”