Former White House advisor Van Jones is offering criticism of Vice President Harris’s performance in a Wednesday town hall hosted by CNN, saying she needs to speak more directly and lower her “evasions” of questions.
Jones said Harris “passed” the test of seeming like someone who would fight for ordinary people, but knocked her performance overall.
“I think that the word salad stuff gets on my nerves. I think that some of the evasions are not necessary. But when she‘s talking about trying to get you a house, I believe her,” he said.
Jones was responding in part to fellow Democratis strategist and CNN pundit David Axelrod, who pointed to Harris’s “word salad” when asked direct questions.
“The thing that would concern me is when she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to word salad city, and she did that on a couple of answers,” Axelrod said in comments highlighted by Mediaite last night after the town hall.
While he offered some criticisms of Harris, Jones argued that the vice president is being held to a higher standard than former President Donald Trump.
Jones said the Republican nominee “gets to be lawless” while the vice president “has to be flawless.”
Both candidates are working to reel in voters in the final weeks before the general election. Harris has a 0.9 percentage point lead nationally according to The Hill’s average of polls.