CNN commentator Van Jones said Monday that Vice President Harris has gone from being a somewhat awkward figure in the Democratic Party to a “cool” pop culture personality in a matter of days, mostly thanks to the influence of social media.
“All the things that were cringe-y about Kamala — her laugh, the coconut tree comment, being unburdened — like, all those weird things she said, she’s gone from cringe to cool in 24 hours as a whole generation has taken all that content and remixed it in all these incredible TikTok videos,” Jones said on CNN Monday.
Harris raised $81 million in the first 24 hours since President Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed his vice president to succeed him as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, her campaign announced. But Jones argued that Harris has also undergone an image transformation on TikTok.
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“It’s hard to quantify energy, but it seems to me that this is what happened: For three weeks after Joe Biden had that debate debacle, we were kind of sitting outside the ICU with a death watch for democracy,” Jones said. “Just imagine what it’s going to be like to have Donald Trump back in charge, what he’s going to do to us.”
But Jones said that Democrats have since rebounded and started a new “movement” under Harris.
“The minute that Joe Biden stepped back and let someone else step forward, she caught a rocket ship of enthusiasm and hope and this pent-up desire for something not the future that looked like it was going to be inevitable,” Jones said.
“This is not the normal Democratic Party where we’re all arguing and busting about pronouns and syllables and semicolons,” Jones said, referring to divisions between liberals.
“We are passionate about stopping Donald Trump, and she has pulled together an unbelievable movement behind her,” he continued. “This is not a campaign. This is a movement.”
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Jones, a former Obama administration official, was one of Biden’s most vocal supporters in the media before his debate performance against former President Trump. Following Biden’s announcement that he would be withdrawing from the race, Jones praised the president for making a difficult decision.
Just last week, Jones said the Republican National Convention felt like “Obama 2008” and that “there’s something happening” on the GOP side giving the Trump campaign energy and enthusiasm.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
