Vernon Jones: I've always been a conservative. I was raised that way on a farm in rural North Carolina. My parents were very serious about faith and serving God. Working hard and work ethics was important to my family, not being seen as a victim and not relying on the government to be the caretaker for you, to wait on the government to do something for you. As a matter of fact, they wanted as little government interference as possible in their daily lives, for it not to intervene with their American dream. But also I learned a lot from them – in terms of what this country means, the patriotism.
Vernon Jones served as a state representative in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2017-21. He's also the founder of Waking Up America, an organisation promoting "traditional values." Jones joined the GOP in January 2021.
My dad was a World War Two veteran. I have four brothers that also served in the military, and a brother in law enforcement. And so those values that I was indoctrinated with as a young person, traditional families and things like that, never left me. The Democratic Party used to carry those values, they used to possess those values. But over the past 30 years, that has been eroded. Now the Democratic Party does not support law enforcement and they do not support traditional families.
The Democratic Party supports socialism and Marxism. I've never seen anything like that before.
And they want African-Americans to continue to cry victim. And more importantly, the bigotry of the Democratic Party is that if you're African-American and you're independent with your thinking, you don't have any room under that so-called big tent that they talk about.
So those are the things I'm just more in line with. And so I'm coming to this grand old party, the party of new ideas, a party of a new opportunities, a party of new faces. Many of them look like mine, who want to preserve conservative values – treating your neighbour neighbourly, it doesn't matter what your party is, it's about working together and supporting one another, job creation, things of that nature, helping people start their businesses, not raising taxes but cutting taxes.
I didn't leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me. 🇺🇲 https://t.co/xkrctxcqK0
— Vernon Jones (@RepVernonJones) January 14, 2021
I just could not stomach what the Democratic Party was doing. Even now, when you look at the Democratic Party, Nancy Pelosi et al., they're trying to impeach the president because of what they falsely accuse him of – of causing mob violence – when in fact he urged them them to contact their elected officials and let them know how they feel in a peaceful way. He did say "in a peaceful way." But when I look at how they're condemning him and wanting to impeach him, when Black Lives Matter and Antifa were destroying this country, burning buildings, including government buildings, federal courthouses, police stations, police cars, assaulting police officers, even twenty six people, I believe, to the tune of twenty six people who were killed, including a one-year-old baby girl in a stroller in New York and an eight-year-old baby girl in Atlanta, Georgia, while burning up many black businesses.
Zero tolerance for violence. Zero tolerance for hypocrisy of the media and democrats. @ABC @NBCNews @CNN @washingtonpost @FoxNews @MSNBC @nbc @nytimes @cbs46 @ajc @DNC @JoeBiden @MZHemingway https://t.co/6f74nkMKBM
— Vernon Jones (@RepVernonJones) January 13, 2021
And so where was the condemnation? And why didn't Nancy pass a resolution urging Antifa and Black Lives Matter not only to stop the violence, but at the same time call them out and declare them as terrorist organisations?
Why didn't Joe Biden say the same thing and call that crowd a mob and a terrorist organisation?
Even the liberal media – they would be in front of burning buildings and report it as a "mostly peaceful protest." Well, if you want to talk about "mostly peaceful," the president, when he spoke in front of those thousands of people, when he was speaking, the other crowd was already over at the US Congress. I know that because I was there – when the president spoke, he never urged anyone to do that.
It's a matter of fact, by the time people left to try to get over to the US Capitol, it was already crowded with thousands of people, most of them peaceful, 99.9 percent peaceful. But let me be clear, I do not tolerate violence on any side – there is zero room for violence. But there's not enough room coming from the Democrats for those who want to peacefully congregate, protest for their rights and let their congresspersons know how they feel at the United States Congress, which is the people's house, it's so ironic.
Sputnik: The Democrats and mainstream media have been blaming Trump for the troubles. Is that fair?
Vernon Jones: That's what I don't understand. Why didn’t they blame Nancy Pelosi, the squad, Maxine Waters, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, why didn't they blame them for egging on the violence with Antifa and Black Lives Matter?
To the peaceful Patriots who came to our nation’s Capitol today, we can not drown out our message with violence. We are not ANTIFA or a lawless a mob. We are Americans who believe in the rule law and follow the principles of our constitution. pic.twitter.com/VfonY7ZXOZ
— Vernon Jones (@RepVernonJones) January 6, 2021
There were teachers, doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement officers who were there to call on their government, they have a right to do that, just trying to have a right to vote.
Sputnik: Many people are clearly disgruntled over the handling of the 2020 election. Do you think the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency is at risk as a result?
Vernon Jones: I'll tell you this. What they're doing now, trying to impeach the president, it's not unifying people but further dividing them. Around 75 million people voted for President Trump. Where's that going to get us? And he only has a few days left. He said he is supportive of a peaceful transition.
The whole thing about a non-peaceful transition was started by the media.
There's so much hypocrisy. People feel that there were clearly enough irregularities to distrust our election process. And there were those who were involved in mail-in ballots, which had the most exposure for fraud, which Stacey Abrams was directly involved in, in Georgia with our secretary of state, cutting a backroom deal that created this mistrust, that created the frustration. It just doesn't make sense, the hypocrisy of this whole thing.
I was ambushed leaving the White House by a left-wing mob for proudly supporting @realDonaldTrump. I won’t watch my country be destroyed by @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer and radical Democrats. @CNN @MSNBC @cbs @NBCNews @ABC @washingtonpost My response: pic.twitter.com/MhjzPSqEkE
— Vernon Jones (@RepVernonJones) August 31, 2020
I am here to urge people to unify. But I am also urging people to continue to stand up for their rights peacefully. You can't even say, oh, stand up and fight for your rights, because now the left and the media are trying to say, if you're coming from the right you're igniting violence because you say "fight." Don Lemon says "fight" and Anderson Cooper has said "fight" before. But now all of a sudden you have to be careful of the censorship that's going on. That is just unbelievable, where you have these big tech companies who support a particular party, and if you're not part of their party, then you get treated differently.
You're called out for things that other people are not called out for, including violence. They never call out Antifa. They never call Black Lives Matter. And certainly Joe Biden didn’t.
But what about those who peacefully demonstrated but felt as though their voices weren't being heard? So the double standards here, it's just amazing. And the cancel culture backing that up from the left. It's just unbelievable.
Sputnik: How did we come here? Are there specific events, benchmarks, that you can outline?
Vernon Jones: We got here because when Antifa and Black Lives Matter started terrorising the American people during the election, the left and the Democrats egged it on.
Footage of violent clashes that took place on Saturday afternoon between Trump supporters and counter-protesters at BLM Plaza in Washington, DC https://t.co/p3vO4GwlQz pic.twitter.com/KUnopafQNy
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) December 12, 2020
Why? Because they thought it would help them defeat President Trump. That's how it started. You don't hear any Democrats calling out Black Lives Matter or Antifa. But you still have Republicans calling out those who broke the law during the march in Washington, and they should be called out. But that's not the American people as a whole. That's a small percentage of people who broke the law. And justice should be served. There's zero tolerance for any type of breaking of the law, and certainly for violence. But at the same time, you can't condemn one when it's convenient for you and not the other when it's not convenient for you.
Sputnik: How much of a toll is all of this taking on American society?
Vernon Jones: America is dealing with a lot right now. COVID almost brought America to its knees. People lost their jobs. They lost their businesses, and all this during a political year where you had the media, mainstream media, others politicising these very important issues, blaming one party or another, blaming one person over the other. And it just created so much anger and frustration as opposed to addressing what the issues are, the last COVID relief, the financial assistance, it took the House Democrats eight months to get something out there that could have been done months ago. All of this adds up. People are just not taking it anymore. And they need some relief. And politicians need to get their act together in a bipartisan fashion. Listen to both sides, condemn violence on both sides and move this country forward.
Sputnik: How bad is it in general? Was it very different four years ago?
Vernon Jones: I tell you, the media started that whole division four years ago, they laughed and ignored Donald Trump and made fun of him. Then they took a side. They were with Hillary Clinton when Hillary lost. They were so disappointed, so upset about it that from day one, they targeted this president with Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia – but there was no Russia. Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine – no Ukraine. And then he went through an impeachment. And then he was blamed for COVID.
Even when he tried to stop international travel from China, which is where the virus came from. And so it's just one thing after another. And then the day that, before he was even sworn in, there were those on the left side, including congressmen, who were calling for his impeachment then – before he could even raise his right hand, take an oath. And so it never stopped for four years. In America they literally started an insurrection – the liberal media started an insurrection with the American people. And divided us, and created all of this behaviour, supported the violence with Antifa, Black Lives Matter. All because they didn't like who got elected president. That's where it started.
Sputnik: Do you think the Democrats have what it takes to mend fences?
Vernon Jones: No. Because if they did, they would have started already by stopping this impeachment foolishness.
If Joe Biden wants to heal this country, why didn't Joe Biden say to the Democratic Party, we are not going to do this? No. We're going to move on.
Sputnik: What about the GOP? What’s the way out of this crisis?
Vernon Jones: The GOP was fragmented too. A lot had to do with the fact that many of them were cutting and running because the media was putting pressure on them. The media was sending a message back home to their respective districts and they felt pressured, they caved in, many of them did. But many of them didn't like the fact that this president didn't kiss any rings. He got elected and he became the head of the Republican Party.
Those Never Trumpers – they couldn't win. This president came in and won.
But that's why you see CNN bringing people on their shows, African-Americans who would call the President a racist. They would bring in Never Trumpers who would talk about how horrible Trump is, but they wouldn't bring me on air.
I'm African-American. I was a Democrat. Why didn't they bring me on air? Because I would call out who the real bigot is and that is Joe Biden.
For him to say that if you don't vote for him, you're not black, or for him to say that blacks aren't as diverse as the Latino community... Wow. And they never call him a bigot. They never call him a racist. So is this the hypocrisy and the double standards. And that's part of what created this division in this country. The media needs to do some soul searching too.
