On CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday, panelist Van Jones claimed that Trump didn’t deserve Obama’s “silence” after he leaves office, because Trump was going to undo every good thing Obama did as President. “Obama came in to fix things that W. broke. Trump is coming in to break things that Obama fixed,” Jones asserted.
The comment came after host Anderson Cooper brought up Obama’s statement during yesterday’s press conference, that he would not stay silent as a civilian, regarding Trump’s presidency. Cooper then asked guests Kirsten Powers and Van Jones why Obama would do that, considering George W. Bush purposefully stayed quiet when Obama entered office.
ANDERSON COOPER: Kirsten,clearly it seems like one of the big headlines out of that press conference is that President Obama, when he is civilian Barack Obama, he's not going to stay quiet when he believes what he talked about is the core values of America may be threatened.
KIRSTEN POWERS: I think that's really huge, especially when you compare it to how George W. Bush sort of went off into the sunset and we didn't really --
COOPER: In fact George W. Bush said that President Obama deserves his silence.
POWERS: Yeah. I think a lot of people, at least Obama supporters and perhaps Obama himself really appreciated that. So the difference is I think President Obama it’s pretty clear he’s looking ahead and I think he’s expecting there’s going to be some things he'll need to speak out about, these are things he cares deeply about, and that there is a real divide between him and Donald Trump. So it's interesting now he's still very much in President mode because he is still President and saying we're going to be okay. It will be interesting to see what he says when he's not President. Is he still going to be as positive?
Cooper then brought Jones into the discussion, saying that Bush could’ve spoken up for the 2nd Amendment as a “core value” that Obama was threatening, but he didn’t. Jones, the former Obama staffer, responded by bashing Bush and praising Obama for rescuing America from all the things Bush screwed up on. Jones then predicted Trump was going to redo the same things Bush did so he didn’t deserve Obama’s respectful silence.
ANDERSON COOPER: It’s interesting though Van, I mean, George W. Bush could have said when President Obama became President, well, when the core values of the Second Amendment are threatened I'm going to speak up. He didn't. He said he deserved silence. Why doesn't Donald Trump deserve President Obama's silence?
VAN JONES: It’s very simple. Because Obama came in to fix things that W. broke. Trump is coming in to break things that Obama fixed. It's literally the exact opposite situation. W. horribly unpopular, W. passing off a broken economy, passing off two terrible wars, said Obama deserves my silence. Obama passing off a growing economy, passing off at least not two land wars, and frankly a country that under his leadership at least was wrestling with some of these issues around inclusion. Trump coming in basically saying all that sucks, I'm going to break it.
