Van Jones Returns, Sends Glenn Beck Love
Six months after leaving the Obama administration, former green jobs czar Van Jones is staging a public comeback, directing his love at the Republicans who helped pushed him out of the administration – whether they want it or not.
Jones, who left the administration last September amidst questions from Fox host Glenn Beck and others on the right about his politics before joining the administration, was finally pushed to resign after the emergence of a petition he'd signed supporting the Sept. 11 "truth movement."
His return to the public stage began Wednesday, when the founder of the advocacy group Green for All was named a senior fellow at the Green Opportunity Initiative at the progressive Center for American Progress, and separately appointed as a fellow at Princeton University, teaching environmental and economic policy.
Jones also took to the airwaves, visiting with some prominent African-American commentators to promote his green agenda.
His message: Republicans – who called for his head just six months ago and who, before accepting his White House job – could work with Democrats to promote a green jobs initiative.
"Conservatives should be really happy because we're talking about enterprise," Jones told Roland Martin of his green plans Sunday on TV One's "Washington Watch."
In an unexpected outpouring, Jones gave props to Beck at the NAACP Image Awards on Friday, delivering a message to his “fellow countryman” while accepting the President’s Award for his work on green initiatives.
“I see you, and I love you, brother. I love you and you cannot do anything about it. I love you and you cannot do anything about it,” Jones said. “Let’s be one country. Let’s be one country. Let’s get the job done.”
(Beck returned the love shot on Twitter: “I love you too,Glad to all live in one country.Will it be the founders country or the one you pushed when with storm?”)
Speaking the same day to Suzanne Malveaux on CNN, Jones recalled a recent speech of his that tea partiers attended, where someone “on the front row, like, you know, mad-dogging me and I started talking. I started talking about American jobs and the future and how we can be one country, and the guy's book starts getting lower and lower and lower, and at the end of the speech, he came up and asked me to sign Glenn Beck's book.
Asked what he wrote, Jones said, “We are one country, Van Jones.”
For weeks before Jones's resignation, Beck had led the charge against Jones, accusing him of being a communist because of his affiliation with a 1990s anti-war group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. Jones was the founder of a group, Color of Change, that had pushed for a successful advertising boycott of Beck's show after Beck had already twice criticized Jones on the air.
Jones repeatedly denied Beck's charges, but the talker has stuck to his guns. During the annual Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, Beck repeated the charge that Jones is a "self-described" communist.
When Jones resigned last September, he released a statement acknowledging the right's role in his departure after Republicans aired several inflammatory comments he'd made over the years. In addition to the 9/11 petition question, Jones also drew fire for calling Republicans "a-holes."
"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide," Jones said.
In an interview with PBS's Tavis Smiley Thursday, Jones revisited how he ended up signing a petition calling for an investigation of the Bush administration role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. During his interview with Smiley, Jones called the whole debacle a misunderstanding in which his name was put on a petition - one that he says he never actually saw.
Jones said some people approached him at a conference saying they represented 9/11 families and said, " 'Will you help us?' I said, 'Sure, whatever you want.'
"And then these people, I didn't know what their agenda was, they went and put my name on some abhorrent, crazy language they never showed me, I never saw. And it just sat there on this website for years," Jones said on the program.
On "Washington Watch," Jones reiterated that he willingly stepped down, saying that he felt that the controversy surrounding him was distracting attention away from the health care debate.
"I chose to resign because I was becoming a distraction," Jones said. "There were things I had said done in my past that were being confused."
Sources: Politico, Think Progress, NAACP, Twitter, Youtube
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