‘Going against the grain’: is bipartisanship really possible in America?
On election night 2016, Van Jones, the criminal justice advocate and former Obama administration official turned CNN anchor, processed his shock on live television. “This was a whitelash against a changing country,” he said. “It was a whitelash against a Black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.” The clip, in which Jones appeared near tears and essentially called Donald Trump a “bully” and a “bigot”, went viral. For many, it was shorthand for shock and dismay, an articulation of unspeakable anger, and a rare example of a pundit calling it like it was.
So it was confusing that over the next few years, Jones, a Black man from western Tennessee, was seen at the Trump White House, conducted the first (and uncomfortably chummy) TV interview with Trump’s son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner, and
