Van Jones: Trump ‘selling sweet-tasting candy with poison in it’

CNN’s Van Jones slammed President Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday, saying Trump was “selling sweet-tasting candy with poison in it” and accusing him of “smearing” Dreamers.

“[He’s] a master salesperson, who used all of those stories really well,” Jones said. “He was selling sweet-tasting candy with poison in it.”

“What he said about those young people, he implied — and he did it deliberately — that Dreamers are gang members,” Jones continued, using the term that commonly refers to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “Facts matter.”

{mosads}Jones, who last year said Trump “became president of the United States” during his address to a joint session of Congress, said Trump’s remarks on immigration were “completely unacceptable.”

“We have a moment now where 90 percent of the country agrees that these young people deserve a shot,” he said. “And to smear these young people … it’s morally wrong.”

During his address, Trump called on Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would include a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and slash legal immigration, as well as provide a path to citizenship for nearly 2 million undocumented immigrants that meet the DACA criteria.

Trump cast his plan as helping immigrant families and U.S. workers.

“Struggling communities, especially immigrant communities, will also be helped by immigration policies that focus on the best interests of American workers and American families,” he said.

Trump also claimed during the speech that “open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities” as he highlighted the 2016 murder of two New York girls by MS-13 gang members.

“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal, unaccompanied alien minors,” Trump said. “Tonight, I am calling on Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13, and other criminal gangs, to break into our country.”

Some Democrats booed and hissed at Trump at one point during the speech when he called for reform of the family reunification visa program, which he and some Republicans refer to as “chain migration.” 

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) slammed Trump in a statement following his remarks, saying Trump’s agenda is “to gut legal immigration in exchange for allowing some of the Dreamers to live here.”

“For those of us who support legal immigration, and that’s most Democrats and many Republicans, it won’t fly,” he said. “The speech did nothing to bring the pro- and anti-immigrant sides closer together.”