CNN host Van Jones ripped President Trump over reports that he paid off an adult-film star to keep their affair quiet, saying that if former President Obama had done it, he would have been whisked away to Guantanamo.
“New Day” host Alisyn Camerota asked Jones on Thursday: “Isn’t it fun to play the ‘What if Barack Obama did this?’ game?”
“If Barack Obama had done just half of what Trump did last week, he would have been impeached. He’d be in Guantanamo,” Van said, a former adviser to Obama. “They’d have said ‘Listen, something’s wrong with this guy. He’s no longer here. Biden’s the president … we’re moving on.’ ”
{mosads}Adult-film star Stormy Daniels this week filed a lawsuit against Trump seeking to void a nondisclosure agreement set up by Michael Cohen, an attorney for Trump. Cohen paid her $130,000 before 2016 to not talk publicly about the alleged affair, which she says took place in 2006.
In the CNN segment, Jones noted the other turmoil that has gripped the White House in recent days.
Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, resigned when Trump refused to walk back on his plans for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports despite the opinion of his advisers.
If Obama reversed position on “12 different issues” and lost half his staff, he “would have literally just disappeared,” Jones said.
Jones argued there is a new “low level” of standard for the leader of the free world.
“The fact that we have to ask the question ‘Is it significant that maybe he paid off a porn star right before he was going to be elected president so the porn star wouldn’t tell the world that he was cheating on his wife right after his last son was born?’ Is that significant? The fact that we’re asking is significant,” Jones said.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied the affair Wednesday. However, she acknowledged for the first time that Trump had won arbitration against Daniels in court, declining to provide any further detail.
“The theory of the case is that Michael Cohen did this,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said of Trump’s personal lawyer who paid the hush money to Daniels. “He did this because he cares about the president. He did it with his own money. And saying that the president won the arbitration puts him in the dynamic as opposed to just a third-party beneficiary of it.”
Jones came to Sanders’s defense.
“She’s tap dancing on marbles all day,” Jones said. “At some point you’re going to slip. The marbles are not coming from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the marbles are coming from the Oval Office, from the president. … From the fact that he has all these sleazy people around him, trying to cover up for the sleazy stuff he does in a sleazy way.”