Van Jones laments decline of 'mainstream' media, says Dems don’t 'understand' it

CNN host Van Jones told a media symposium in New York City on Dec. 4 that “the entire political class is way off” in trying to understand the American electorate that no longer conducts politics or reads media the way that they are expected to. Jones told the DealBook Summit that voters are no longer responding to traditional door-knocking routines during political election campaigns.

Describing his own experience during the 2024 presidential election campaign in "the Philly suburbs,” Jones said he was thunderstruck by the response he received. “I'm telling you, we are way off. The entire political class is way off. First of all, digital is a new door knocking. You gotta understand that we were laughing our butts off at Donald Trump for suspending his door-knocking campaign and letting Charlie Kirk and Elon [Musk] do a bunch of stuff online. We said, these guys are idiots. These guys are stupid. Then you start knocking on these doors,” Jones said. The moment was originally posted to X by Eric Abbenante.

The Democratic pundit said the first thing he noticed was that people opened their front door with “their phone in their hand” because they are rarely away from it. “They're in a 24-hour digital surround sound that has nothing to do with CNN, has nothing to do with any stuff that we do.”

Jones said he decided to ask his teenage son, “Who are the most influential people in the world today.” He expected the boy to respond with names like Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey or maybe even Jay Z. Instead, he responded with a series of names that included Jinxy and Sketch. Jones said he hadn’t heard of these people and when he kept repeating, “What,” his son told his father that he should try different social media platforms like Twitch, Kick and Rumble.

“I said that sounds like you need to go to the hospital. What are these platforms?” Jones asked.

“I'm telling you guys, the mainstream has become fringe and the fringe has become mainstream. There are people out there that are getting 14 million streams, and we're on cable news getting one or two million and so there is a whole world out there,” Jones said, before stopping and nodding to former White House Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway, who was also participating in the symposium. “I hate to agree with her but I do a lot of times, Donald Trump understood that and we didn't. And that's not just Democrats, the entire political class is way off, way off, way off.”