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Van Jones Called It A Sad Night For Country Too

by Joseph D. Lyons

The debate may not have served for much — at least not for much good. People probably won't be voting much differently, and there wasn't a lot of new ground covered in the policy discussion. In fact viewers really didn't learn much new, except for the scary answer from Donald Trump that he may may not accept the election results. Now that sure doesn't make America great again, but it may have blown some life into the oldest cable news network. CNN commentator Van Jones's summary of the debate night is one of the highlights of all coverage.

"This is a very sad night for this country,” Jones said on the air. “You can’t polish this turd. I’m sorry. The entire panel — Anderson Cooper with eight commentators — broke into laughter before Cooper added jokingly, "Technically, you can't polish any turd." Jones was upset over Trump's comment that he's going to keep America "in suspense" until Nov. 8 and decide then whether he accepts the election results. "I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time," he said.

So you can see why he says it's a giant turd. But that was just the beginning of Jones's dismay. He went on to say this:

What you just got now was the nominee of a major party, for the first time in our history, signaling to the American people that he has so little faith in our institutions ... that he will not stand in front of his own country, in front of his own nation, and say that he respects the process and the outcome. That is an outrage!

Jones was far from the only one to bemoan this. Hillary Clinton herself did so from the debate stage. She tried to explain it to Trump. "That is not the way our democracy works," Clinton said "We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. She then referenced Obama's comments that Trump should stop whining about losing, even before the race is finished before finally laying it into him:

And let’s — you know, let’s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. He is denigrating — he’s talking down our democracy. And I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position.
ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

On top of Clinton and Jones, there were editorials in many of the country's major newspapers criticizing Trump's response. The New York Times said he insulted the American voter and that the debate generally was full of "narcissism, bombast and mendacity by Mr. Trump." The Washington Post was no kinder. They called his assertion "breathtaking." "Respecting the will of the voters has since the end of the Civil War allowed for a peaceful transition of power that has made this country the envy of the world," the editorial board wrote.

Because polishing the turd will be the least of the problems if Trump actually goes through with this threat.