Amidst a wave of social media posts from the left demonizing Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination, CNN contributor and certified leftist Van Jones revealed that, just before his death, Charlie had reached out to him in a major goodwill gesture.
Jones detailed Charlie’s attempts to seek constructive dialogue in an interview with Anderson Cooper and in a post on X:
Jones, who seemed genuinely surprised and touched by this sincere attempt at connecting, showed proper respect and appreciation for the real Charlie Kirk, the man the left is trying reframe as a hater.
Jones told Cooper, “We were beefing. We were going at it online, on air, and then after he died, after he was murdered, my team called and said, ‘Van, he was trying to reach you man’…And what was he doing? Dialogue: ‘let’s be gentleman together.’ He says, ‘Let’s disagree agreeably.’”
Jones went on to counter the entire fabricated leftist narrative about Charlie: “This guy is reaching out to his mortal enemy, saying ‘We need to be gentlemen (and) sit down together and disagree agreeably.’ And the next day he’s killed. And I’ve sat on it long enough, and I said, ‘You know what, we’re going (into) memorial weekend for this man. We disagree. Everybody knows we were not friends, okay, at all. But you praise the good when it’s time to memorialize somebody…'
“And I didn’t even know it was good. He was not for censorship. He was not for civil war, he was not for violence. He was for dialogue – open debate and dialogue, even with me.”
Jones wasn’t finished. Cooper tried to interrupt and move onto the next question, but Jones had a few words for those who would use Charlie’s death for their own purposes: “I think what happens is people get so worked up, Anderson, seeing us go at it they think they’re supposed to go out and kill somebody, or go out and talk about civil war, or go out and silence people, or cancel people, or fire people, or censor people about Charlie Kirk?”
Jones reinforced that he didn’t agree with Charlie on almost anything, but reminded the CNN audience that both he and Charlie were “words not weapons guys.”
Jones said he would have taken Charlie up on his invitation and that he wanted to defeat Charlie in a debate. He then issued a call to bring the temperature down through dialogue. He cautioned that America is not on a good track right now and something needs to be done, but most don’t know how. But then he credited Charlie for showing the way.
“Charlie Kirk in his last message to me was pointing a way out. Civil discourse, civil dialogue, debate," he said. "Let’s disagree agreeably.”
Prior to Kirk sending this olive branch to Jones, the two had been sparring online and in their public comments over the recent murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte public transit car.
While nothing Jones said indicated that his core leftist positions were affected in any way by Charlie’s last message to him, it was clear that Charlie’s humanity—shown in the heat of the moment and almost prophetically the day before he was murdered—had an effect on Jones
How much of an effect remains to be seen, but one way to find out is to see if Jones invites conservatives onto his platforms and treats them with the same respect Charlie proposed: “disagreeing agreeably.”
One more thing: If you want to see the Democrats go down to defeat in next year’s midterms and beyond, now is the time to join the battle to Make America Great Again. Without you, America can lose. We need your help to succeed!
As a PJ Media VIP, you’ll receive exclusive access to our behind-the-paywall content, commenting privileges, and an ad-free experience. VIP Gold gets you this same level of access across our entire family of sites (PJ Media, Townhall, RedState, twitchy, Hot Air, Bearing Arms). And if you CLICK HERE and use the promo code FIGHT, you’ll receive a 60% discount!